you have a problem with that?

recycle your World War One soldier poems / "Does it Matter?" by Siegfried Sassoon (1918)

A soldier's prosthetic knee is examined at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC. His face is blurred to respect his privacy.

During the Vietnam War and again in the Iraq War, in both the medical/scientific press and the war-friendly political press, the wars have been credited with stimulating great technical advances in prosthetics. With each war, technology gives U.S. troops artificial limbs closer and closer in function to the limbs they went to war with.

Note, and celebrate, that the decorated Lieutenant Sassoon survived the French trenches of World War One and lived to a ripe old age.

==========================================

Does it Matter?

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)
from "Counter-Attack and Other Poems," 1918

Does it matter? -- losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter ? -- losing your sight?...
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter? -- those dreams from the pit?...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad;
For they'll know you've fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.

© George Sassoon

wtf moment at the Solid Waste Landfill

Count Robert de Montesquiou (1895 - 1921)
by Giovanni Boldini

so from out of the blue i get this e-mail from this nice lady in Maine wishing to know all that I could tell her about le Compte Robert de Montesquioi, a Parisienne aristocrat and salon figure.

a correspondence followed in which i blew a lot of smoke out of my ass pretending i knew what she was talking about, because i never heard of this Person in my whole fucking life.

Finally tonight the lightbulb came on in my poor confused haid.

~ ~ ~

Madame,

At the birth of our Correspondence was the Mystery of how you stumbled upon Vleeptron and why you thought I might actually Know Something which might in any way be of value to your researches.

I told you I actually do have a pretty steel-trap memory, and yet just couldn't imagine what I might have posted that reflected your List Of Hi-Tone Upscale Fin du Siecle French People.

The Mystery has been solved. You stumbled on

http://vleeptron.blogspot.com/2006/02/w-graham-robertson-who-gave-blakes.html

my post of the portrait of W. Graham Robertson, the wealthy English aristocrat who donated William Blake's magnificent portrait of Isaac Newton to the Tate Gallery. My post has John Singer Sargent's beautiful portrait of Robertson.

And some filched text from an homage site about Singer Sargent:

It's my impression that Graham liked to think of himself as the English equivalent of the Comte Robert de Montesquiou, whom he was also friends. Though, from what I can tell, Graham was far more talented, wielded far less influence, and didn't possess near the malicious streak (if at all) that Montesquiou had.

Moiself, this was the first and last time me and le Comte de Montesquiou had ever rubbed elbows. But I filched a whole bunch of Montesquiou/Graham/Sargent stuph from Natasha Wallace, who is clearly up to her armpits in this Krew:

http://www.jssgallery.org/Essay/W_Graham_Robertson/Time_Was.htm

I drive a 4x4 pickup truck, for christs sake! I drive my trash to the Solid Waste Landfill! You think I know anything about le Comte Robert de Montesquiou? Not unless he drives his 4x4 pickup to the Landfill too.

But, for a momentary scare that my beloved Memory was turning to Mush, this has been FUN!!!

your devoted Servant,

M. le Duc Robert du Merkin de Toyota

P.S. The Solid Waste Landfill is closed on Wednesday and Sunday.

lest we forget

Thanks very much to kedron for bringing this memorial to the Boston Mooninite Scare to Vleeptron's attention.

Bostonians must never forget the terrorist threat they faced that day from 2-dimensional fictitious cartoon creatures. Boston's Public Safety men and women could have been vaporized at any moment, until one of them remembered that her high-school son is always watching ATHF on Adult Swim when he should be doing homework or sleeping.

Incidentally, the chief of Cartoon Network had to throw himself on his sword and quit last week. I think he also said he was sorry. Time-Warner is paying a gazillion dollars to Boston, willingly, they don't want a long dragged-out lawsuit which would probably be televised on Court TV.

an ethical, smart news professional puts his media outlet on a public-service diet

Editor & Publisher is the trade/industry magazine of North America's print and wire journalism business.

When you see a newsroom employee reading the house copy of E&P, chances are the employee is cruising the Help Wanted ads in the back and is looking for a new job.

This is a somewhat remarkable story. In Washington DC, the press is starving for news, and it's a common practice for federal government officials as elevated as cabinet secretaries to toss the sharks a little red meat -- enough to generate a news story -- but on the strict condition of anonymity.

The problem comes, of course, if the anonymous source doesn't want to help the press inform the American people with authentic, substantive news, but rather wants to use and manipulate the press to disseminate lies or fantasies or hallucinations which will help the anonymous official or the administration spread a particular self-serving political flavor or aroma.

The "Scooter" Libby trial is all about this intimate relationship between the Washington press and senior Bush administration officials who toss hot stuff to pet reporters on this unnamed, unacredited basis. The press gets a red-hot story (often of dubious credibility), and the White House gets what it wants: In this case, revenge against a former Clinton administration official who, in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, publicly discredited the factual basis for Bush's claim that Sadaam Hussein was secretly trying to buy fissile uranium for his weapons program from the African nation of Niger.

Libby is accused of anonymously leaking the news tip that the wife of the official who publicly called the Iraq-Niger uranium story a bunch of crap was a covert CIA operative.

In the Vietnam War era, anti-war radical activists were so infuriated with the worldwide activities of the Central Intelligence Agency that they began publicly identifying CIA operatives abroad. One instance of this "outing" may have led to an assassination of a covert CIA operative. Congress quickly made it a federal felony for anyone to "out" the identity of a CIA undercover operative.

Libby isn't charged with this crime, but with lying about these anonymous news tips under oath before a federal grand jury. Libby allegedly manipulated the Washington press corps' feeding frenzy for news from top government sources so the White House could strike back at a public accusation that its pre-Iraq intelligence was knowingly skewed to convince Congress and the American people to support a war against Iraq. Until his perjury indictment, Libby had served as chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney.

Oddly enough, perjury (and not extramarital fellatio) was the accusation at the heart of the Bill Clinton impeachment. Republicans who screamed for Clinton's impeachment repeatedly had to insist that they weren't trying to remove a sitting president for an extramarital sexual affair, but for lying under oath about it.

Agence-Vleeptron Presse wishes to thank a gentleman from a large nation to the north of the United States (don't jump to conclusions, it could be France) for his un-anonymous tip (he used his name) which led to this E&P story about a radio station news director in New Mexico who says:

No More Anonymous
Driveby News Sources.

Notice how it mirrors Vleeptron's policy:

No More Anonymous Driveby Comments.

(Unless they say flattering things about Vleeptron.)

If there's something corrupt or dangerous or sleazoid about unnamed government sources and the Washington press corps' feeding frenzy, it's the responsibility of the media to put itself on a diet, and demand that government officials who have important news for the American people use their fucking names.

The National Public Radio station KSFR in Santa Fe, New Mexico, just put its news department on a diet. They're fighting back and protecting their listeners, and the integrity and credibility of their news broadcasts, by not biting, unless the red meat has a government official's name on it.

=================

Editor and Publisher
(trade/industry magazine, USA)
Tuesday 13 February 2007

Radio Station Cries 'Enough'

Won't Quote From Certain News Stories
Relying on Unnamed Officials

by Greg Mitchell

NEW YORK -- After the latest widely-publicized stories in national newspapers about weapons from Iran allegedly killing Americans in Iraq -- based completely on unnamed sources -- at least one smaller news outlet has had enough of it.

The news director of the public radio station in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has directed his staff to "ignore national stories quoting unnamed sources." He also called on other news outlets to join this policy.

Bill Dupuy sent the following to his news staff.

***

Effectively immediately and until further notice, it is the policy of KSFR's news department to ignore and not repeat any wire service or nationally published story about Iran, China, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia or any other foreign power that quotes an "unnamed" U.S. official.

What we have suspected and talked about at length before is now becoming clear. "High administration officials speaking on the condition of anonymity," "Usually reliable Washington sources," and others of the like were behind the publicity that added credibility to the need to go to war against Afghanistan and Iraq.

Our news department covers local news. But, like local newspapers and others, we occassionally are taken in by national stories that we have no way to verify.

This is a small news department with a small reach. We cannot research these stories ourselves. But we can take steps not to compromise our integrity. We should not dutifully parrot whatever comes out of Washington, on the wire or by whatever means, no matter how intriguing and urgent it sounds, when the source is unnamed.

I am also calling on our colleagues in other local news departments -- broadcast and print -- to take the same professional approach.

***

Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor.

can anyone in the pathetic, confused, frightened new Congress stop the war against IRAN before it starts?

The Crazy Cocksucker and his Fox News Stooges are working overtime every day and night so he can start a new War in IraN before his presidential term ends.

It's a Legacy Thing. He wants to make sure Americans will always remember him for killing more of our soldiers and marines on Loser Useless Hopeless Doomed Liars Racist Wars against non-Christians in Asia than any president in history.

He wants to make Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon look like Boy Scout troop leaders.

Vleeptron is now calling for submissions for a stunning and patriotic design for the new Iraq War Memorial on the Washington DC Mall. And maybe in a few months it can be a combined Iraq And Iran War Memorial, with Afghanistan tossed in -- a 3-in-1 Bush Whack War Memorial with thousands or tens of thousands of dead U.S. soldiers and Marines.

Back during the Vietnam War, there was this common bumper sticker:

SUPPOSE THEY GAVE A WAR
AND NOBODY CAME

Well, here's a better bumper sticker for the Iran warmongering jingoistic sabre-rattle toxic foxic Depleted Uranium shit from Tony Snow and the Insane-Guy-in-Chief and Faux ("Fair and Balanced") News Channel:

SUPPOSE THEY TRIED TO GIVE A WAR
BUT AMERICANS SCREAMED SO LOUD
THE WAR NEVER STARTED

U.S. military deaths in Iraq as of today: 3132
flag-draped coffins flown back to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Total wounded as of today: 23,417

Estimates vary as to how many soldiers and marines are returning from Iraq with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (what our WWI and WWII grandfathers called shell-shock). 20 percent may be a conservative figure. Few are getting sufficient treatment from military hospitals. Some soldiers and marines diagnosed with PTSD are quickly assigned to combat again.

U.S. military killed in action during the Vietnam War:

58,159

(Marc Leepson, ed, Webster's New World Dictionary of the Vietnam War. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.)

The Psycho-in-Chief ceases to be president on 20 January 2009. So the Psycho-in-Chief has to work fast to get as many names of the Mouthless Dead on the Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan War Memorial as he can. He's killing our neighbors' children ("They're all volunteers; they knew what they were getting into," say the Patriots) as fast as he can. He is a very ambitious soldier-killing Homicidal Maniac, surrounded by a paranoid cabal of vengeance-dripping Muslim-haters who have been drooling for decades to bring Shock And Awe to the Iranian towelheads.

Here is a moment, a snapshot of an effort in Congress to stop the Iran War before Bush starts it.

Before he ran for Congress from Western Pennsylvania, Murtha was a career U.S. Marine officer who served in combat in Vietnam.

Maybe it will work.

Or maybe ten years from now we will look back on it as a pathetic failed footnote in a House and Senate controlled by Democrats who didn't have the political courage to Just Say No.

Whomever we elect to be president after Bush, Republican or Democrat, woman or man -- will inherit the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, and now maybe the Iran War. Like Nixon after Johnson, will the next president have the clarity and courage to stop these wars as they keep hemmorhaging the blood of our neighbors' children?

Probably not. Historically, screaming for a president-politician to use the constitutional Commander-in-Chief powers to end a war the USA hasn't managed to "win" (whatever the fuck "winning" would be) is practically impossible, unimaginable. It's Third Rail, it's Political Suicide. Nixon couldn't and wouldn't, so after he was forced to quit, it fell to the late President Gerald Ford to have to pull the plug on the hopeless Vietnam War.

God save my neighbors' children, as quickly as possible, and bring them safe home as quickly as possible.

~ ~ ~

The Associated Press
Thursday 15 February 2007

War Critic Eyes Plan
To Halt Iraq Deployments

Bush: Lawmakers' Iraq Thinking Hard To Follow

WASHINGTON -- A longtime critic of the Iraq war thinks he's got an idea for stopping the troop buildup -- an idea that could have a lot more teeth to it than a non-binding resolution.

Democratic U.S. Rep. John Murtha wants any future deployments to Iraq tied to two conditions:

* Troops would have to meet high standards of training and

* they would have to get enough rest between combat tours.

Murtha, who chairs the House panel overseeing military spending, doesn't think a single Army unit meets those standards, which would effectively stop the president's plan to send more than 21,000 extra troops.

Murtha is also warning the United States lacks the capability to sustain a possible war in Iran. When an Iraq war spending bill comes up, Murtha said he might add a provision requiring congressional approval to take military action against Iran.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also entered the debate over Iran, saying Bush has no authority to invade that country without specific approval from Congress.

The California Democrat said she takes Bush "at his word" when he says he supports a diplomatic resolution to differences with Iran. But she adds that "Congress should assert itself" and make clear that it has not given the president authority to go into Iran.

The House is due to vote Friday on the nonbinding resolution opposing the Iraq deployments.

Anticipating a blow from House Democrats on Iraq, President Bush is taking a few swings of his own.

In a speech to a conservative Washington think tank, Bush said it would be a contradiction for the Democratic controlled Congress to pass a resolution criticizing a troop buildup after approving the nomination of General David Petraeus to take command in Iraq. Bush said the buildup is part of Petraeus' plan.

But Bush said the question of funding will be an even more important vote.

He is asking Congress for nearly $100,000,000,000 for the war effort. He said that will give troops "the resources they need to do their job and the flexibility to prevail."

The president also praised the coordination between Iraqi and coalition forces, as they begin a sweep through Baghdad aimed at quelling sectarian violence.

Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

========

The Associated Press
Thursday 15 February 2007

Pelosi: Bush Lacks
Authority to Invade

Pelosi says Bush would need
congressional approval to invade Iran

by DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent

WASHINGTON -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that President Bush lacks the authority to invade Iran without specific approval from Congress, a fresh challenge to the commander in chief on the eve of a symbolic vote critical of his troop buildup in Iraq.

Pelosi, Democrat-California, noted that Bush consistently said he supports a diplomatic resolution to differences with Iran "and I take him at his word."

At the same time, she said, "I do believe that Congress should assert itself, though, and make it very clear that there is no previous authority for the president, any president, to go into Iran."

Pelosi spoke in an interview in the Capitol as the House moved through a third marathon day of debate on a nonbinding measure that disapproves of the military buildup in Iraq while expressing support for the troops.

Passage of the measure was expected Friday. Pelosi and other Democrats have said approval would mark the first step in an effort by the new Democratic-controlled Congress to force Bush to change course in a war that has killed more than 3,100 U.S. troops.

Bush administration officials and their allies are resigned to House passage of the resolution and have worked in recent days to hold down defections by GOP lawmakers.

But Bush took a swipe at his critics during the day.

"This may become the first time in the history of the United States Congress that it has voted to send a new commander into battle and then voted to oppose his plan that is necessary to succeed in that battle," the president said.

The Senate unanimously confirmed Lt. Gen David Petraeus last week to take over as the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Bush said at a news conference Wednesday there is no doubt the Iranian government is providing armor-piercing weapons to kill American troops in Iraq. But he backed away from claims the top echelon of Iran's government was responsible.

Administration critics have accused the president of looking for a pretense to attack the Islamic republic, which is also at loggerheads with the United Nations about what Tehran says is a nuclear program aimed at developing energy for peaceful purposes.

Defending U.S. intelligence that has pinpointed Iran as a hostile arms supplier in Iraq, Bush said, "Does this mean you're trying to have a pretext for war? No. It means I'm trying to protect our troops."

Bush has asked Congress to approve $100,000,000,000 for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congressional Democrats are hoping to insert provisions that would make it harder for the administration to follow through on its plan to deploy an additional 21,500 combat troops to Iraq.

Rep. John Murtha, Democrat from Pennsylvania, who is leading the effort, has said the measure may be changed to require that any troops deployed must meet formal Army readiness standards.

Murtha also said the measure may be changed to prohibit any military action against Iran without specific congressional approval.

- 30 -

©MMVII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (Republican from Texas) speaks about the Iraq War

HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS

Before the U.S. House of Representatives

Wednesday 14 February 2007

Statement on the Iraq War Resolution

This grand debate is welcomed but it could be that this is nothing more than a distraction from the dangerous military confrontation approaching with Iran and supported by many in leadership on both sides of the aisle.

This resolution, unfortunately, does not address the disaster in Iraq. Instead, it seeks to appear opposed to the war while at the same time offering no change of the status quo in Iraq. As such, it is not actually a vote against a troop surge. A real vote against a troop surge is a vote against the coming supplemental appropriation that finances it. I hope all of my colleagues who vote against the surge today will vote against the budgetary surge when it really counts: when we vote on the supplemental.

The biggest red herring in this debate is the constant innuendo that those who don’t support expanding the war are somehow opposing the troops. It’s nothing more than a canard to claim that those of us who struggled to prevent the bloodshed and now want it stopped are somehow less patriotic and less concerned about the welfare of our military personnel.

Osama bin Laden has expressed sadistic pleasure with our invasion of Iraq and was surprised that we served his interests above and beyond his dreams on how we responded after the 9/11 attacks. His pleasure comes from our policy of folly getting ourselves bogged down in the middle of a religious civil war, 7,000 miles from home that is financially bleeding us to death. Total costs now are reasonably estimated to exceed $2 trillion. His recruitment of Islamic extremists has been greatly enhanced by our occupation of Iraq.

Unfortunately, we continue to concentrate on the obvious mismanagement of a war promoted by false information and ignore debating the real issue which is: Why are we determined to follow a foreign policy of empire building and pre-emption which is unbecoming of a constitutional republic?

Those on the right should recall that the traditional conservative position of non-intervention was their position for most of the 20th Century-and they benefited politically from the wars carelessly entered into by the political left. Seven years ago the Right benefited politically by condemning the illegal intervention in Kosovo and Somalia. At the time conservatives were outraged over the failed policy of nation building.

It’s important to recall that the left, in 2003, offered little opposition to the pre-emptive war in Iraq, and many are now not willing to stop it by de-funding it or work to prevent an attack on Iran.

The catch-all phrase, "War on Terrorism," in all honesty, has no more meaning than if one wants to wage a war against criminal gangsterism. It’s deliberately vague and non definable to justify and permit perpetual war anywhere, and under any circumstances. Don’t forget: the Iraqis and Saddam Hussein had absolutely nothing to do with any terrorist attack against us including that on 9/11.

Special interests and the demented philosophy of conquest have driven most wars throughout history. Rarely has the cause of liberty, as it was in our own revolution, been the driving force. In recent decades our policies have been driven by neo-conservative empire radicalism, profiteering in the military industrial complex, misplaced do-good internationalism, mercantilistic notions regarding the need to control natural resources, and blind loyalty to various governments in the Middle East.

For all the misinformation given the American people to justify our invasion, such as our need for national security, enforcing UN resolutions, removing a dictator, establishing a democracy, protecting our oil, the argument has been reduced to this: If we leave now Iraq will be left in a mess -- implying the implausible that if we stay it won’t be a mess.

Since it could go badly when we leave, that blame must be placed on those who took us there, not on those of us who now insist that Americans no longer need be killed or maimed and that Americans no longer need to kill any more Iraqis. We’ve had enough of both!

Resorting to a medical analogy, a wrong diagnosis was made at the beginning of the war and the wrong treatment was prescribed. Refusing to reassess our mistakes and insist on just more and more of a failed remedy is destined to kill the patient-in this case the casualties will be our liberties and prosperity here at home and peace abroad.

There’s no logical reason to reject the restraints placed in the Constitution regarding our engaging in foreign conflicts unrelated to our national security. The advice of the founders and our early presidents was sound then and it’s sound today.

We shouldn’t wait until our financial system is completely ruined and we are forced to change our ways. We should do it as quickly as possible and stop the carnage and financial bleeding that will bring us to our knees and force us to stop that which we should have never started.

We all know, in time, the war will be de-funded one way or another and the troops will come home. So why not now?

~ ~ ~

from Congressman Paul's website:

Ron Paul was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Gettysburg College and the Duke University School of Medicine, before proudly serving as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force during the 1960s. He and his wife Carol moved to Texas in 1968, where he began his medical practice in Brazoria County. As a specialist in obstetrics/gynecology, Dr. Paul has delivered more than 4,000 babies! He and Carol, who reside in Surfside Beach, Texas, are the proud parents of five children and have seventeen grandchildren.

Dear Friend, You are probably surprised to be receiving this e-mail. My name is Ismail Hunderscoot, the third child of the former Minister of Diamonds

Amherst is about 12 miles east of me. It's the center of the Five College Area -- University of Massachusetts, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, Hampshire College, Amherst College. Everybody older than 16 has a masters degree in Sanskrit or a PhD in Womens Studies.

Education doesn't help.

==========

The Daily Hampshire Gazette
(Northampton Massachusetts USA)
Tuesday 13 February 2007

Police Log

* An Amherst woman reported to police Friday at 11:27 a.m. that she lost more than $14,000 after she sent cash to Nigeria as part of a scam in which she had received postal orders, cashed them at her bank and then sent a portion of the money to the foreign country. Police are warning residents about potential scams involving fake money orders.

===========

Not as good as This. Nothing is as good as This.

check one: [ ] I'm sorry [ ] I'm not sorry

Once upon a time, long, long ago, the scariest bunch of political terrorists in Europe, maybe on Planet Earth, was the Baader-Meinhof Gang of West Germany -- more formally they referred to themselves as the Red Army Faction.

Only one thing is guaranteed to defeat the world's worst terrorists: Time.

(Strangely enough, Time is also guaranteed to defeat the world's nicest people.)

U.B., Agence-Vleeptron Presse's Mensch-on-the-Ground in Berlin DE, has not made a peep in months. Maybe this will get his attention, and maybe he can put the B-MG / RAF into perspective for us (and tell us how you call them auf deutsches).

Were they really as bad as the tabloids screamed they were? What kind of young women and men were they when they committed their crimes? What were their backgrounds before that? (Ulrike Meinhof had been a journalist.) Do any Germans have nice things to say about them? Do they have a fan club, or a website?

Or was this member, for example, really and truly the "most evil and dangerous woman in Germany"?

Notice in this story the value of regret and remorse.

Show none, serve more decades in prison, maybe die in prison of old age.

Express remorse and regret, say you're really sincerely very sorry, and you get Early Release.

In Camus' "The Stranger," a Frenchman murders an Algerian Arab. The French authorities want to release him with a slap on the wrist.

But he's finally hanged, because he won't say he's sorry. Because he doesn't feel sorry.

He pays for his honesty with his life. He could have gotten away with murder for free if he'd just said to the judge: "I'm sorry."

~ ~ ~

The Independent & The Independent on Sunday (UK)
Tuesday 13 February 2007 20:03

Red Army Faction killer
freed after 24 years in prison

by Tony Paterson in Berlin

Brigitte Mohnhaupt, a former Red Army Faction terrorist described as the "most evil and dangerous woman in Germany," was cleared to be released from jail yesterday after serving her minimum sentence of five life terms for nine murders by the left-wing urban guerrilla group in the 1970s and 1980s.

A court in Stuttgart ruled that Mohnhaupt, 57, who has never expressed remorse for her crimes, should be freed on probation next month after serving 24 years for killing a judge, a lawyer and a German industrialist during the group's "anti-imperialist" campaign.

The judges said they considered that she no longer posed a threat to society. "This is not a pardon but a decision based on specific legal considerations," they said in a joint statement.

Reactions to the ruling were predictably diverse. Left-wing and liberal politicians greeted it as the mark of a civilised society. "Our justice system is not out for revenge," Dieter Wiefelspuetz, of the ruling Social Democrats, said. "It allows for sentences to be commuted to probation under certain circumstances and we have to respect this."

But Joerg Schleyer, the son of Hanns Martin Schleyer, the German industrialist who was kidnapped and shot dead by the group in 1977, said: "I can't understand the court or why she should be freed. In 30 years Mohnhaupt never uttered one word of apology for killing my father."

Until her arrest in 1982, Mohnhaupt was known as the leader of the "second generation" Red Army Faction, a left-wing terrorist organisation founded in the late 1960s, which declared war on capitalist West Germany because of its perceived failure to destroy its links with the Nazi era. The organisation carried out bomb attacks and kidnappings which claimed 34 lives before it disbanded in 1998.

Mohnhaupt, called "Germany's most evil and dangerous woman" by one of the country's mass circulation newspapers, has never given an interview to the media or sought a pardon. It was not clear yesterday whether the conditions for her release from Aichach prison in Bavaria would include giving her a new identity.

The case coincides with that of Christian Klar, 54, the other prominent former terrorist from the group still in prison. Klar, who was convicted of nine murders and 11 counts of attempted murder after his capture in 1985, has two years of a 26-year sentence to serve before he is eligible for release.

Unlike Mohnhaupt, Klar recently appealed to President Horst Köhler to grant him a pardon. Mr Köhler has yet to make a decision on the case, which has caused controversy because of conflicting reports about Klar's readiness to show remorse. A recent poll showed that 70 per cent of Germans opposed Klar's early release if he does not show regret for his crimes.

In a television interview conducted from jail in 2001, Klar appeared a bewildered individual locked in left-wing guerrilla ideology. Asked whether he felt remorse, he said: "In the political arena and against the background of our struggle, this is not a concept." He has since reportedly modified his views.

Aichach's governor, Wolfgang Deuschl, said he understood Mohnhaupt's reasons for failing to show remorse. "She committed crimes when still young, then she was arrested, freed, went underground and spent another 20-plus years in jail ... You can hardly expect her to say, 'Everything that I have done in my life was rubbish'."

The other members

* CHRISTIAN KLAR: Jailed for 26 years for nine murders and 11 attempted murders. Scheduled for release in 2009, he has requested a pardon.

* BIRGIT HOGEFELD: Second generation Faction terrorist captured in 1993. Jailed for life for a string of murders. Earliest release 2011.

* ANDREAS BAADER: Red Army Faction founding member arrested in 1972 for arson and robbery. Found dead in his cell from gunshot wounds in 1977.

* ULRIKE MEINHOF: Former journalist and founding member of Red Army Faction. Arrested in 1970 and jailed for eight years. Killed herself in 1976.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

US military deaths in Iraq: 3123 / recycle your World War I soldier poems: When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead

The World War One Scot soldier poet Charles Hamilton Sorley

As of Sunday 11 February 2007, the War in Iraq had killed 3123 U.S. military women and men, and 23,417 U.S. military women and men have been wounded.

Meanwhile, Fox News Channel is pumping up the volume, frothing with righteous American bloodlust, and beating the drums for a new war, with Iran.

They're just our neighbors' children, we can push them into combat and we can sustain their return home in flag-draped coffins. They're all volunteers now; they knew what they were getting into when they signed up.

The Iranian military is weak and will fold right away when we invade, and the Iranian people have begged to be liberated from strict and oppressive religious rule. Iranians will be happy to see American tanks roll into Tehran, and pretty Iranian girls will run into the street to kiss the American soldiers and Marines.

How, exactly, does one say this politely and respectfully? The president and his war-happy cabal have lost their fucking minds. Bush is a lame duck with no political support from Congress and the American people. But he is Commander-in-Chief, and the only move left in his doomed chess game is to start another war, to divert the American people from his catastrophe in Iraq, and rally a new round of support for a new American war. And then he can leave the soldiers and Iraq and Iran to the next president to deal with.

If you have a little time, this might be the last couple of weeks when it might be possible to send e-mails to your Senators and your Representative in Congress and say:

I do not want the United States to start a war against Iran.

Send a copy to U.S. Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice, and to U.S. Secretary of Defence Dr. Robert M. Gates. They pretend to be sane on television. Maybe they can effectively resist Bush's psychotic intention to start another war in the final months of his disastrous presidency.

If enough people write enough very clear and angry letters, this might be an American war that never begins. And you will have signed your name to the War That Didn't Begin. The War That Has No Memorial to Its Dead in Washington DC, because it has no War Dead.

Without doubt, Bush will go down in history as the worst president since Warren G. Harding; his legacy of catastrophic failure and footshooting harm to the United States was carved into stone several years ago. In my lifetime, he makes Richard Nixon look good.

The color and the flavor of what's happening to American soldiers and Marines in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars haven't included much good poetry, but there once was a war in the English-speaking world that, for some mysterious reason, left behind deeply moving and brilliant poetry written by its soldier victims. The world is generous: Some of them survived the ghastly war.

Vleeptron first ran this poem on 08 August 2005.

~ ~ ~

Charles Hamilton Sorley, a Scot from Aberdeen, was shot through the head and died instantly at age 20, at the Battle of Loos, on Wednesday 13 October 1915. His body was lost, but his kit bag was found and sent home to his family. They found this poem inside it.

When You See Millions
of the Mouthless Dead

Charles Hamilton Sorley (1895-1915)

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, "They are dead." Then add thereto,
"Yet many a better one has died before."
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.


Original text: Charles Hamilton Sorley. Marlborough and other Poems. 4th edition. Cambridge: University Press, 1919: 78 (no. XXXIV). First publication date: 1916. Composition date: 1915. Form: sonnet. Rhyme: ababbabacdcdcd

your pee tested positive for drugs / I AM NOT A DRUG USER! / your pee tested positive / I AM NOT A DRUG USER! / your pee tested positive / I AM NOT A

Hmmm uhhhh this is pretty arcane and obtuse. So I apologize (for bringing back memories of Mrs. Price, your 10th grade Algebra teacher).

Lately people have been describing state lotteries as a Tax on people who are bad at math.

We live in an environment where increasingly, for one bad reason or another bad reason, a private company or government agency or school demands a urine sample from you.

You tinkle while a monitor watches or listens (to make sure you didn't smuggle in a vial of Certified Pure Nun's Urine), and then you wait for a few weeks for the test result.

Someone in a laboratory will make a decision about whether you're a drug user or not. If it's POSITIVE for some illegal substance, a variety of Bad Things will happen to you, and over the next two years you and a lawyer can work out the legal ramifications of that. You may be kicked out of school, or kicked out of the military, or fired, or sent to jail or prison.

But the whole ordeal begins in the laboratory. After the chemistry test, here is precisely how the lab makes its decision about you, and this is a precise computation of the size of the mess or the depth of the shit you're in.

Should you care? Is this more than you want to know or more than you think you need to know? Wouldn't you just rather pee and wait and hope, and ignore everything else?

These are the equations from statistics and probability called Bayes' Theorem, and Wikipedia had this really dandy example, and I wanted to share it with you.

I'm curious to know what you think about it.

I read a lot of whack shit on the Internet, yards of text that seem to make no sense whatsoever.

Here's 8 inches of some whack shit that seems to make no sense whatsoever.

I strongly recommend you crawl to the last paragraph, which is authentically interesting and surprising.

(Did you folks know this? Am I the last to get this news?)

Science historians call World War One "the chemists' war" and World War Two "the physicists' war," and predict World War Three will be "the mathematicians' war" -- that is, the side that does complicated or new math best will win.

This example explains down to the smallest nut and bolt how the lab decides that you're a user of illegal drugs.

================

from Wikipedia

================

Bayes' Theorem

Example #2: Drug testing

Bayes's theorem is useful in evaluating the result of drug tests.

Suppose a certain drug test is 99% accurate, that is, the test will correctly identify a drug user as testing positive 99% of the time, and will correctly identify a non-user as testing negative 99% of the time.

This would seem to be a relatively accurate test, but Bayes's theorem will reveal a potential flaw. Let's assume a corporation decides to test its employees for opium use, and 0.5% of the employees use the drug.

We want to know the probability that, given a positive drug test, an employee is actually a drug user.

Let "D" be the event of being a drug user and "N" indicate being a non-user.

Let "+" be the event of a positive drug test.

We need to know the following:

* Pr(D), or the probability that the employee is a drug user, regardless of any other information. This is 0.005, since 0.5% of the employees are drug users.

* Pr(N), or the probability that the employee is not a drug user. This is 1-Pr(D), or 0.995.

* Pr(+|D), or the probability that the test is positive, given that the employee is a drug user. This is 0.99, since the test is 99% accurate.

* Pr(+|N), or the probability that the test is positive, given that the employee is not a drug user. This is 0.01, since the test will produce a false positive for 1% of non-users.

* Pr(+), or the probability of a positive test event, regardless of other information. This is 0.015 or 1.5%, which found by adding the probability that the test will produce a true positive result in the event of drug use (= 99% x 0.5% = 0.495%) plus the probability that the test will produce a false positive in the event of non-drug use (= 1% x 99.5% = 0.995%).

Given this information, we can compute the probability that an employee who tested positive is actually a drug user:

Despite the high accuracy of the test, the probability that the employee is actually a drug user is only about 33%. The rarer the condition for which we are testing, the greater percentage of the positive tests will be false positives. This illustrates why it is important to do follow-up tests.

First Day Issue / Postalo Vleeptron / Lord Kelvin's 1876 drum and cable tide predictor

Click

First Day Issue / Postalo Vleeptron

Lord Kelvin's 1876 drum and cable tide predictor, an analog computer to solve differential equations. Later an electrical stage of measurement and dials was added to increase precision.

In the Principia, Newton gave the first accurate scientific and mathematical explanation of the tides, which are caused by the gravitational attraction of the Moon and, to a lesser degree, the Sun.

In practice, the actual behavior of tides at a specific coastal location is affected and modified by a variety of local geological and topological factors which are difficult to describe precisely in tide equations.

Rather than performing arithmetic on discrete integers, an analog computer substitutes one physical phenomenon (angular turn of drums) for another (the cycle of local tides). Subsequent analog computers used (and still use) electric voltages as analogs of natural phenomena. These have the advantage of instantaneous computation; as soon as the question is asked electronically, the answer is generated eletronically, with no delays for software iterations. A typical analog computer can add, subtract, multiply, divide, compute trigonometric functions, differentiate and integrate. A disadvantage is that analog computers are special-purpose devices which can only perform a limited set of mathematically similar problems.

Rainbow Tables / a Vleeptron wtf moment / decrypt THIS, mofo!

an Enigma coding/decoding machine used to encrypt radio communications by the German military during World War II

French military security stole the plans, couldn't make headway with them so gave them to Polish mathematicians, who cracked the Enigma code first, then fled with their electromechanical automatic solving "bombes" to England, where a team at Bletchley Park (halfway between Oxford and Cambridge) led by Alan Turing invented the first high-speed digital computer to tackle the ever-more-complicated German code system. People with skills in literature, languages and word games were as valuable to the team as mathematicians.

Okay, now if anyone has the slightest Clew or Clue or Insight into what the hell these people are talking about, The Vleeptron Advanced Mathematics Resarch Institute (VAMRI) would be very grateful.

I stumbled on these completely mysterious Rainbow Tables by clicking around the dutchpowercows site.

There are ultra-hard codes which the distributed / cooperative computing community is trying to crack. (Sometimes big $$$ prizes!)

So I can tell you that a Rainbow Table is some sort of Platonic Object, or Database, big-ass list of a huge number of numbers.

But what can you do with it? Can it walk the dog? Can it brew coffee? Can it entertain the kiddies?

This Philippe Oechslin dude, I'll bet he's way smart. I wonder what kind of music he likes, I wonder what his hobbies are.

Cryptography seems to be experiencing an explosive challenge from Amateurs with computers and, worse/better, access to giant networks of thousands of cooperating PCs. Big national governments thought they had the monopoly on this Arcane Hobby, because they were the only institutions who could afford the supercomputer hardware.

Woltman's Inequality:

5000 PCs > 1 supercomputer

Anyway, wtf ........ ????

===========================

Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running!

Rainbow table

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A rainbow table is a lookup table offering a time-memory tradeoff used in recovering the plaintext password from a password hash generated by a hash function, often a cryptographic hash function. A common application is to make attacks against hashed passwords feasible. Salt is often employed with hashed passwords to avoid this attack.

History

Rainbow tables are a refinement of an earlier, simpler, but less efficient algorithm that used the inversion of hashes by looking up precomputed hash chains.

Each table depends on the hash function and the reduce function used. The reduce function is a surjective ("onto") function which maps a hash to a password using the desired character set and password length. Therefore, a reduce function for lowercase alphanumeric passwords of 8 characters length is different than a reduce function for case-sensitive alphanumeric passwords of 5-16 characters length.

A chain is a sequence of passwords. A starting password is chosen, and the following is done to get the next one in the chain:

reduce(hash(a password)) ? next password

After a chain containing a suitable number of passwords is created, the final password in the chain is hashed, and the final hash and the starting password are stored together in the rainbow table.

To reverse a hash, look for it in the table. If it isn't found, the following is done to get another hash to try:

hash(reduce(a hash)) ? next hash

This is repeated until a hash is finally found in the table.

When a match is found, the original password that started the chain that ended with that hash can then be used to generate all the other passwords, and hence hashes, in the chain. Each of the hashes thus generated will be checked to against the original target hash, thus hopefully revealing the correct password.

The end result is a table that contains statistically high chance of revealing a password within a short period of time, generally less than a minute. The success probability of the table depends on the parameters used to generate it. These include the character set used, password length, chain length, and table count.

Success probability is defined as the probability that the plaintext can be found for a given ciphertext. In the case of passwords, the password is the plaintext, and the hash of the password is the ciphertext, so the success probability is the probability that the original password can be recovered from the password hash.

Rainbow tables

Rainbow tables use a refined algorithm by using a number of different reduction functions to create multiple parallel chains within a single "rainbow" table, reducing the probability of false positives from accidental chain collisions, and thus increasing the probability of a correct password crack. As well as increasing the probability of a correct crack for a given table size, the use of multiple reduction functions also greatly increases the speed of lookups. See the paper cited below for details.

Rainbow tables are specific to the hash function they were created for e.g., MD5 tables can crack only MD5 hashes. The theory of this technique was first pioneered by Philippe Oechslin [1] as a fast form of time-memory tradeoff [2] (PDF), which he implemented in the Windows password cracker Ophcrack. The more powerful RainbowCrack program was later developed that can generate and use rainbow tables for a variety of character sets and hashing algorithms, including LM hash, MD5, SHA1, etc.

Defense against rainbow tables

A rainbow table is ineffective against one-way hashes that include salts. For example, consider a password hash that is generated using the following function (where "." is the concatenation operator):

hash = MD5 (password . salt)

To recover the password, a password cracker would have to generate every possible salt for every possible password -- a rainbow table would not necessarily give any benefit.

Salts will, in effect, extend the length and potentially the complexity of the password. If the rainbow tables do not have passwords, the length (e.g. 8 bytes password, and 2 bytes salt, is effectively a 10 byte password.) and complexity (if the salts aren't alphanumeric, but the database only has alphanumeric passwords) then it will not be found. If found, one will have to remove the salt from the password before it could be used.

Also, Rainbow tables tend to have little or no success when extrapolating outside the range of symbols or password length computed into the table. So, choosing a password that is longer or contains symbols not accounted for inside a Rainbow table can be very effective. Because of the sizable investment in computing processing, Rainbow tables beyond 8 places in length are not yet common. However, certain intensive efforts focused on LM hash, an older hash algorithm used by Microsoft, exist in the public domain; for example, the rainbow table available from the Shmoo Group.

Common uses

Nearly all distributions and variations of Unix, Linux, and BSD use hashes with salts, though many applications use just a hash (typically MD5) with no salt. The Windows NT/2000 family uses the LAN Manager and NT LAN Manager hashing method and is also unsalted, which make it one of the more popularly generated tables.

References

* Making a Faster Cryptanalytical Time-Memory Trade-Off, Philippe Oechslin, Advances in Cryptology - CRYPTO 2003, 23rd Annual International Cryptology Conference, Santa Barbara, California, USA, August 17-21, 2003, Proceedings. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 2729 Springer 2003, ISBN 3-540-40674-3

* Rainbow tables explained, Ph. Oechslin, (ISC)2 Newsletter, Mar-Apr 2005

External links

* Ophcrack page by Philippe Oechslin The original rainbow table research with online demo

* Project RainbowCrack

* How Rainbow Tables work An easy to read article on how Rainbow Tables work

Categories: Cryptographic attacks | Search algorithms | Data structures

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Bob is tired of Folding alone. Bob's next Distributed/Cooperative Computing Team: The Dutch Power Cows!!!

click, maybe Good happens

When my college student pal Phrost extincts Folding@Home PhrostByte Team 53337 -- he is desperately folding proteins to win a folding competition so he can win free hours on a computer game service, exactly like Vleeptron gives away free Pizza -- I shall need to find another Folding team to join. I am tired of Folding Proteins alone, by myself, in the dark, no one to talk about Folding Proteins with. I want to be on a Team.

This one:

The Dutch Power Cows

These suckers mostly geekspeak in Dutch, but if you speak Geekish to begin with, it's pretty easy to grok.

The Power Cows are a Very Big and a Very Ambitious team of Distributed Computing freakazoids. They do Folding@Home , of course, and they do SETI@Home, but they also do some really strange brute-force computing projects, like Seventeen or Bust, and deciphering coded messages ($$$ prizes!) like RC5-72 and OGR-25 from RSA, the company founded by 3 Number Theory geniuses who invented modern computer cryptography -- the way you buy crap on the Web with your credit card safely, most of the time.

The Dutch Power Cows are into so many different (and I think interesting) Distributed/Cooperative Computing tasks that you can just pick one or two you like for pure aesthetics -- which one tickles or fascinates or stimulates or obsesses you the most. I started on G.I.M.P.S., the very first Distributed Programming project, and then Folding@Home caught my eye and my brain and my passions and my imagination.

There is the promise, the possibility, the tease that if Folding@Home blossoms into its promise, my goofy efforts, just to click the mouse a few times a year, and look at Real Pretty Wiggling Pictures whenever I like, may help find the cures for some ghastly diseases.

The Vleeptron High Non-Junk-Science Council certifies that this is an Authentically Scientific Promise. Beyond that, as Doris Day liked to sing:

Que sera, sera!
Whatever will be, will be!
The Future's not ours to see
Que sera, sera!

My diabetes doctor has forbidden me from ever again listening to Doris Day sing or watch a Doris Day movie. One more Doris Day 1960s Clean Sex comedy, he tells me, could kill me. If she sings in the movie, it will be Sugar Overdose City.

Perhaps you are thinking: Hey, I don't know shit about Molecular Biology, and I don't give a shit about Molecular Biology. I got a D in biology and I think it sucks. Why should I get messed up with this weird Folding@Home shit?

1. Phrost's reason: It's all about the Free Computer Game Hours. (Chat up Phrost on Undernet #narcotics for details.)

2. Your humble PC could accidentally stumble across the cure for AIDS or some ghastly variety of cancer or Alzheimer's Disease, and they would definitely send an e-mail to your Mom to tell her that you cured AIDS.

3. Once you install the Folding@Home software on your PC (2 minutes or less), you never have to think about it or do anything again. It does all the computing -- the protein folding modeling -- silently, and when it gets an answer, it automatically sends the answer via the Internet to Folding@Home world headquarters, which is at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California USA. HQ sends back a new protein for your PC to fold automatically. You won't even know you're doing it. You might even forget you're Folding.

4. You can end up with weird new pals like The Dutch Power Cows. First you can chat with them safely from far away about Nerd Stuff, and later maybe they'll let you crash on their sofa in Utrecht for 4 or 5 days.

I suspect most of the DPC don't give a flying fuck about molecular biology either. These are overclocker freakazoids. (Overclocking means to push your CPU chip at a faster rate than the manufacturer designed the chip to operate at. Overclockers think their PCs, the way they come out of the box, are Too Fucking Slow, and spend all their money to make Hot Rods and Drag Racers and fighter jets out of their PCs.)

Some people want to drive the fastest motorcycle on Earth. Some people want to fly the fastest airplane or rocket on Earth. Some people want to shoot the most powerful gun on Earth. Some people want to ingest the most powerful drugs on Earth.

The Dutch Power Cows want to use 500 percent of the potential of their souped-up PCs to solve problems which, 10 years ago, were declared Mathematically Hopeless, because no supercomputer was super enough to do the massive volume of computing the problem demands. (At least not in our lifetime, but you can solve some of these problems if you leave your PC powered up and running for a century or two after you die.) One humble PC has no chance to get anywhere with a Hard Problem.

But 3000 or 10,000 or 100,000 ordinary (or souped-up) PCs, all over the world, all Thinking Merrily Away, all jabbering among themselves over the Internet:

The Dutch Power Cows are finding lots of Big Answers.

One of their sub-teams is Los Alcoholicos. Other members or sub-teams are

* Clan Delft
* CyberCow
* Fatal Error Group
* Forza Mucca
* Bubbles

Even though my Dutch sux (no one in NL will speak Dutch to me, they say: "What is the point?"), I get Huge Radiation Hits that these are Very Interesting Human Beings who are all fucked up on being a part of the most powerful computing projects this planet was ever ambitious enough to try to assault or solve.

I suspect you can get good conversations with a lot of these Power Cows.

On my next trip to Yerp I want to see Dwingeloo, where Jan Oort first began to gaze, in radio frequencies, at the universe at the edge of and beyond our Melkweg. (Read Mulisch's "The Discovery of Heaven," it's Dutch but it's been translated into lots of Indo-European and Finno-Ugrik lingos by now, maybe Semitics and Sinos too.)

And now to that agenda I add that I am going to stalk me some Dutch Power Cows and see what goes on in their heads.

Will the Dutch Power Cows let me, a non-Dutch person, join?

Of course. All Things Are Possible, if you beg and whine and debase yourself ceaselessly. (Also they got Belgian Power Cows, so why not an American Power Cow?)

Some of you dorks have left Comments that you think this stuff is Not Important.

Well -- now you know that you can win free computer game hours by doing this shit! Leave A Comment to say you're sorry about the earlier Comment.

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

IRC relapse / Bob joins Team 53337 !!! / Bob makes a Team T-Shirt!!!

* Now talking in #narcotics
* Topic is '/timer 0 3000 #narcotics /hop - welcome back spor! - [Help me fold: http://folding.stanford.edu/ username: PhrostByte Team: 53337] op list after authorization'
* Set by Phrost on Sat Feb 03 02:29:04

{Droog4} meanwhile is Phrost asleep or dead or something? i'd like to ask him something
{Synnergy} He's dead
{Synnergy} I shot him in the face
{Droog4} oh dear
{Droog4} is there a memorial charity i can donate something to?
{Droog4} what civic causes was he involved in?
{Synnergy} You can donate to me
{Droog4} if you were a civic cause close toPhrost's heart, i will send you $300 via PayPal immediately
{Synnergy} I am I am
{Synnergy} I'm his e-gf
{Synnergy} I think I should get sumfin for that
{Droog4} you didn't in any way cause his death, did you? like suffocating him between your strong young thighs?
{Droog4} i wouldn't want you to profit from his death
{Synnergy} oh well ummm
{Synnergy} [15:34] {Synnergy} He's dead
{Synnergy} [15:34] {Synnergy} I shot him in the face
{Synnergy} :(
{Synnergy} He told me to tho
{Droog4} ah okay, straight firearm deal
{Synnergy} So about that 300
{Droog4} you youth! you are such cut-ups!
{Synnergy} Youth???
{Droog4} you old people! you are such cut-ups!
{Synnergy} You don't even know my age
{Synnergy} haha
* Fender has left #narcotics
* Fender has joined #narcotics
{Phrost} i'm here
{Synnergy} So about that 300
{Phrost} who dares disturb thee
{Synnergy} Phrost
{Synnergy} Go away
{Droog4} hey hey phrost
{Synnergy} ur suppose to be dead
{Phrost} wusup niggaz
{Phrost} me dead?
* Phrost cannot die
{Synnergy} Phrost
{EricaLynn} oh bu ti think you cann Phrost
{Phrost} no
{Phrost} erroneous statement

====================
a private chat
====================

{Droog4} hi hi do you do Folding@Home ?
{Phrost} yes sir
{Droog4} oh cool, on that team?
{Droog4} i fold solo so far
{Phrost} you wanna join me?
{Droog4} well ummm i am thinking this would be a Good Idea
{Phrost} sure!
{Phrost} definitely
{Droog4} are you deeply fascinated with biochemistry, or are you a psycho overclocker freak?
{Phrost} a little bit of both but a little bit of neither
{Droog4} do you run some awesome computer?
{Phrost} i'm folding out cuz there's no reason not to
{Phrost} my computer is decent
{Phrost} i'm trying to win a contest for my forums
{Droog4} well i am in the enviable position of being about to buy a new PC
{Phrost} mine is pretty new
{Phrost} c2d e6600
{Droog4} all the other things my computer does takes no real fancy hardware
{Droog4} but what sorta thing should i look for if i want to Fold Fast
{Phrost} i suggest a core 2 duo
{Droog4} oh the intel chip
{Phrost} yes
{Droog4} okay,in the past i have tried to be a Man of the Common Folk, and used AMD
{Droog4} also save $80
{Phrost} AMD is no longer top chip
{Droog4} okay i specify the core 2 duo
{Phrost} yea
{Phrost} where did you find out about the chan/me anyway?
{Droog4} psychic powers, i was born with them
{Droog4} i did a channel list with the word Fold
{Droog4} see Topic
{Phrost} wow
{Phrost} that's cool
{Droog4} here, i whore my blog now: http://vleeptronz.blogspot.com/
{Droog4} well i remembered there's a folding channel on Undernet
{Phrost} wtf
{Droog4} 4 guys, 3 or 4 of them always sleeping
{Droog4} another folding team
{Phrost} well i'd appreciate the support
{Droog4} i never folded competively, do you win free trips to palo alto?
{Phrost} nope
{Phrost} lol
{Droog4} team folding builds character, that's what my high school coach told us
{Phrost} lol;
{Phrost} yep
{Droog4} he's doing 4 years in Lompoc for some sort of perv thing
{Phrost} LOL
{Droog4} okay when santa claus brings me my nifty new core 2 duo computer, how do i join your team?
{Phrost} just download the client and configure it
{Phrost} you can even do it now if you want
{Droog4} no, itmakes no sense to join now and then have to re-join in a couple of weeks
{Droog4} or somesuch paradigm
{Droog4} you should always take an over the counter stool softener when you shoot heroin, the chief side effect of heroin is constipation
{Phrost} yea i know
{Phrost} you can join now
{Phrost} every little bit helps
{Droog4} hmmmm okay
{Droog4} sounds like fun
{Droog4} talk me thru it, i do this once every 5 years
{Phrost} you use windows?
{Droog4} oh soprry, yes, windowsME now
{Droog4} i guess next month Vista
{Phrost} ew winme
{Phrost} i haven't seen that in aw hile
{Droog4} tell me about it, MS no longer supports it
{Phrost} use xp
{Droog4} better than the new vista?
{Droog4} got to go now, i will be back after dinner
{Droog4} keep typing useful folding stuff here
{Phrost} lol
{Phrost} you want the link?
{Phrost} i can get you set up

* * *

{Droog4} okay my Mistress has finished feeding me and has released me for other things
{Phrost} hah
{Droog4} i'm on the folding@home home page
{Phrost} go to downlooad
{Phrost} and choose your version
{Droog4} remember, i already have the software on my box, running solo
{Droog4} okay first prompt is Username, who am I?
{Phrost} PhrostByte
{Phrost} ohhh
{Phrost} ok
{Droog4} i got a new page with 2 PhrostByte hits
{Phrost} 53337 is the team number
{Phrost} i used to fold for google
{Phrost} i will again in about a month
{Phrost} but for now i fold for CAG
{Droog4} now i have a page with PhrostByte's stats
{Phrost} that's me
{Droog4} there's a block with your google stats and a block with your CAG stats
{Phrost} yep
{Droog4} and now what do i do?
{Phrost} http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=PhrostByte
{Phrost} you have the software already?
{Phrost} the graphical windows client?
{Droog4} i am running folding as we speak
{Phrost} windows gui client?
{Droog4} got the little red protein icon
{Phrost} ok
{Phrost} right click
{Phrost} go to configure
{Phrost} and enter PhrostByte 53337
{Phrost} hit OK
{Phrost} and it should start folding for me
{Phrost} i'm only doing this for another month or so... so keep in touch... cuz eventually i'll stop
{Phrost} i'll let you know when
{Phrost} brb
{Droog4} I entered PhrostByte and 53337 and hit OK and the configure page vanished
{Droog4} that's it?
{Droog4} my RL name is (yawn) Bob
{Droog4} so like now i am folding, but for this team?
{Droog4} it's that simple?
* Droog4 has no experience with computer things that simple
{Phrost} hahaha
{Phrost} you're funny
{Phrost} yep now you're folding for me
{Phrost} if you double cick on the protein icon
{Phrost} it should show you the screen
{Droog4} check this out, my first post about Folding:
{Phrost} will read
{Phrost} brb
{Droog4} hot damn! i'm folding for PhrostByte Team 53337 !
{Droog4} i'm making a Team T-shirt tomorrow!
{Phrost} hahaha
{Phrost} awesome
{Droog4} it's been decades since i was on a team
{Droog4} i was Emperor Ming the Merciless of the Planet Mongo Rocket Forces, an amateur rocket launching club
{Phrost} that's cool
{Phrost} where are you from
{Droog4} drive west 2.5 hours from Boston
{Droog4} look for a blue house
{Droog4} park
{Phrost} figures
{Droog4} where do you go to college?
{Phrost} MA person
{Phrost} umbc
{Phrost} university of maryland in baltimore county
{Droog4} aha aha aha
{Droog4} well anyway
{Droog4} if you were a girl
{Droog4} and rich
{Droog4} or very smart
{Droog4} you might go to the small liberal arts all-wimminz college in my town
{Droog4} Smith College
{Droog4} Northampton Massachusetts
{Phrost} brb
{Droog4} also brb, but shit, it's 10 degrees F out there
{Droog4} what class r u taking?
* Droog4 is nosey as shit
* Droog4 was highly paid to be nosey as shit
{Phrost} what classes?
{Phrost} i have experimental design & analysis 2, sociology 101, physiology, intervewing techniques, research assistance, and soccer
{Phrost} no
{Droog4} design and analysis of what?
{Phrost} experiments
{Phrost} lol
{Droog4} dinosaurs roamed the earth when i went to college
{Phrost} hah
{Droog4} you mean like double blind thingies?
{Droog4} and something about Bayes
{Phrost} yea double blinds
{Phrost} social science experiments... conclusions based on statistics and stuff
{Phrost} matching probabilities to alpha levels
{Phrost} z-test, t-test, anova, chi-square
{Phrost} etc
{Droog4} Bayes's theorem (also known as Bayes's rule or Bayes's law) is a result in probability theory
{Droog4} i can't believe i remembered something about that
{Phrost} hah
{Droog4} 94 percent of all heroin addicts started with milk
{Droog4} 88 percent of all traffic fatalities had consumed pickles during the prior 48 hours
{Droog4} you know who Laurie Anderson is?
{Droog4} anyway she said she knows this guy who always carries a bomb with him when he flies
{Droog4} because he read that the odds against there being 2 bombs on the same plane are 4,000,000,000,000 to 1
{Droog4} i have had girlfriends who were more dependable than causal relationships
{Droog4} christ almighty i've actually used chi-square
{Phrost} oh ya?
{Phrost} for what?
{Droog4} okay i think i was programming iterated dice throws
{Droog4} and used chi square to see if i was really getting random dice throws
{Phrost} hmm
{Phrost} sounds kinda pointless
{Droog4} much that i do is pointless
{Droog4} but i'm into Number Theory
{Phrost} hah
{Phrost} right on
{Droog4} computer program randomizers are notoriously un-random
{Phrost} 'are they?
{Droog4} if you have a serious application, you need to be sure that your (synthetic) random numbers are acting randomly
{Phrost} very true
{Droog4} check out "Art of Computer Programming" by Knuth, his discussion of computer random numbers will be about as good and clear as it gets
{Phrost} i got too much to read as it is
{Droog4} no, this is an important book, shoplift it soon and keep it forever
{Droog4} 3 volumes
{Droog4} did you have to read Weber's Protestant Ethic & Rise of Capitalism (for sociology)?
{Droog4} it made my brane bleed
{Phrost} no
{Phrost} i just took socy 101 this semester
{Phrost} brb
{Droog4} you are one lucky sociology student
{Droog4} Max Weber will bore you until you no longer wish to live
{Phrost} hah
{Droog4} Max is called The Father Of Sociology
{Droog4} prepare to meet your daddy
{Phrost} max weber
{Phrost} i think i heard of him
{Droog4} try to sound more confidant and knowledgable if your sociology professor is listening
{Phrost} i've been in the class 3 times already :P
{Phrost} i'm also majoring in it
{Phrost} so i'm gonna take 3-4 socy classes next semester
{Droog4} oh yes, soon you and Max Weber will be dancing the tango bigtime
{Phrost} great
{Phrost} psyc/socy double
{Droog4} have you ever entertained the idea of taking a Hard Science course?
{Phrost} i'm taking physiology now
{Phrost} i've taken biology and astrophysics before
{Droog4} hmmmmmmm oh yeah physiology
{Droog4} astrophysics!!!
{Droog4} unglaublich!
{Droog4} okay i find you Worthy
{Phrost} hah
{Phrost} i got an A
{Phrost} but i got a C in biol :(
{Phrost} i only got 3 C's so far
{Phrost} biol, math 106 and math 150
{Droog4} i got an A in symbolic logic, but then had to spend 3 months in an insane asylum
{Droog4} as Talking Barbie used to say (before Mattel had to recall her): "Math is hard!"
{Phrost} i got a B in critical thinking then spent 39 days in jail
{Droog4} you got me beat by 38 days
{Droog4} i had to set an alarm clock and drive 25 miles to make sure i'd get arrested
{Phrost} heh
{Droog4} what part of Balmer do you live in?
{Droog4} near what?
{Droog4} also i hope you like chesapeake bay crabs
{Phrost} i like crabs
{Phrost} but i like crab salad
{Phrost} don't bother eating them themselves
{Phrost} i live in nw baltimore county
{Phrost} 5 minutes from the city border
{Droog4} whatever, Balmer is Mecca for crabs
{Droog4} i grew up in DC
{Phrost} cool
{Droog4} every summer all the teens from DC and Baltimore meet in Ocean City to exchange genetic material
{Phrost} hahaha
{Phrost} good way of looking at it
{Droog4} was there some other plan i was missing?
{Droog4} seemed pretty clear to me
{Phrost} just worded appropriately
{Phrost} which is rare
{Droog4} words R me
{Droog4} U of Md has some sort of Honor College on the Eastern Shore now?
{Droog4} just heard such a rumor
{Phrost} umes?
{Phrost} i go to an honors college
{Droog4} if u say so
{Phrost} but i'm not in the honors program
{Phrost} i guess i could b e
{Phrost} i got a 4.0 last semester
{Droog4} hahahaha
{Phrost} brb
{Droog4} honor sufficient
{Phrost} i'd say so
{Phrost} what do you do
{Phrost} for a living
{Droog4} i was a newspaperguy
{Droog4} now i write books
{Phrost} i see
{Droog4} pretty sure they're in Enoch Pratt
{Phrost} about what
{Droog4} "Zombie Jamboree" and "The South Florida Book of the Dead"
{Droog4} ZJ is about soldiers in the Vietnam War
{Droog4} SFBD is about naughty drug smugglers and murderers
{Phrost} do you do drugs?
{Droog4} that depends on what you mean by "do" and that depends on what you mean by "drugs"
{Droog4} but oh yeah i have been to NL 8 times
{Phrost} like do you ingest illegal substances
{Phrost} hahah cool
{Phrost} me only once
{Droog4} and i think i lost my middle name there
{Droog4} came home and couldn't find it anywhere
{Droog4} i had to do a week of research at Enoch Pratt
{Droog4} very cool place
{Droog4} also i like your light rail system
{Droog4} and your baseball stadium
{Phrost} what is that
{Phrost} i thought most public libraries are named after enoch pratt
{Droog4} well you might be right, i mean The Big-Ass Main Library with greek columns and shit
{Droog4} i don't know Balmer too well
{Phrost} oh
{Phrost} it's been a while since i went to the local library
{Phrost} sometimes i go to the umbc library though
{Droog4} they had microfilm of a couple of newspapers that went back to the 1700s and i was doing an article about colonial maryland
{Droog4} okay i have to vanish now, thanks for the help with the Team
{Droog4} and the chip advice
{Phrost} np
{Phrost} stop by some time dude
{Phrost} the chan i mean
{Droog4} oh have you noticed? there are 3 dots doing Folding in Iran on the world map
{Droog4} a handful of people in Tehran and the rest in the university city
{Phrost} that's insane
{Phrost} so few people do it
{Droog4} i think it's soooooooo cool
{Phrost} lol
{Droog4} like we're about to declare war on them, and these guys just want to fold the proteins
{Droog4} just like me
{Phrost} hah
{Phrost} we should declare war BECAUSE they don't fold
{Droog4} absolutely!
{Droog4} anyone who doesn't fold is EVIL!
{Phrost} agreed
{Droog4} anyway read my blog post about Folding, let me know if it sux
{Phrost} axis of non folding evil
{Phrost} i read it
{Droog4} hahahahaha
{Phrost} it's good
{Phrost} funny too
{Droog4} ah thank you
{Droog4} yes i love them old jokes
{Phrost} yep
{Droog4} eat some crabs for me you lucky sucker!
{Droog4} laterz
{Phrost} ehhh
{Phrost} cya