socialserve.com

Find affordable housing for rent, in Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, and North Carolina, or for sale in Colorado and North Carolina.

Talk show glossary

I learned a new one. Neal Boortz refers to the Islamic fundamentalists as "weird beards". Cute.

I heard another one yesterday. I was listening to Savage Nation, and he had a substitute running the show, whose name I didn't catch. He referred to environmentalists, who are really Communists, as "watermelons": green on the outside, red on the inside.

I love a good turn of phrase.

Don't talk while I'm interrupting

Greensboro-based columnist Ed Cone provides

"a bipartisan, multimedia template that works for any point of view on the partisan spectrum, in any venue. Forget talking points -- these are shouting points. Repeat after me:

"I am right, and you are wrong.

You are not just wrong, you and those like you are intellectually insufficient and morally suspect. Why do you hate our country? Think of the children. God said to tell you that he is not pleased.

Stop interrupting me while I'm shouting. Feel the crushing weight of my arguments, which are built on logic and constructed from facts that are sturdy and sound. You just whine about how you feel.

"Your information is flawed because it came from a source I know to be aligned with the forces of darkness. I am able to parse the media and edit what I see for bias and spin, while you are a gullible sap who believes everything you see on the TV or read in that wholly discredited rag you just quoted. "

Sounds like the Democrats, to me.
Read the rest

Oscar Night America parties in North Carolina

Oscar Night America parties are charity fund-raising events which allow local people to join in the fun and glamour of the Oscars without having to go too far from home.

Forty-five cities will participate in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' program, which supports local charitable Academy Awards® show viewing parties and provides them with some extra elements of glamour such as posters, programs and the use of the Academy's famous Oscar® logo.

This year, Winston-Salem, and Raleigh, NC, will be hosting parties. For contact information, and to find out which charities are being supported, visited the Oscar Night site.

Go Triad's people of the year

via goTriad.com

Our Top Pick: Nisha Coffey and Ed Moye

No event jumped out at us for its kinetic creativity more than last summer’s 48-Hour Film Project, in which filmmakers had 48 hours to make an eight-minute film. The people responsible for bringing this example of cinematic insanity to Greensboro were Nisha Coffey and Ed Moye, two friends who met while studying filmmaking at UNCG. They worked 18 months to bring the 48-Hour Film Project to Greensboro, overcoming the doubts of national organizers who said, “I’ve never heard of Greensboro.” The result? Twenty-two teams competed, a winner was announced, and next month, a DVD is expected to be available for everyone to see what kind of talent exists around us. And the best part? We can expect the 48-Hour Film Project to come back next year.

Death Knell of the West

FrontPage magazine.com :: by Robert Spencer: "Two Christian pastors in Australia have been found guilty of religious vilification of Muslims. The decision threatens us all." Read the rest

faith cometh by hearing

SermonAudio.com is a free database of streaming audio and mp3 format sermons from fundamentalist pastors all over the world. You can post yours or listen to others. It's an amazing service.

Modest Needs

Modest Needs is a blog that gives out money. You have to apply, and qualify, but there are no strings attached, and they don't discriminate. It's intended to help people with extraordinary financial emergencies that affect their independence, and their limit is $1,000.00.

I believe in Creation

by Joseph Farah, WorldNetDaily: About theories of evolution: "If something in science suddenly becomes so sacrosanct that you can't question it, then it ceases to be science. It's actually a contradiction of the principles of science and the scientific method, which requires testing, evidence, proof. "

Read the rest

Parked in a Desert, Waiting Out the Winter of Life

via The New York Times : "Directions to purgatory are as follows: from Los Angeles drive east past Palm Springs into the bowels of the Mojave Desert. Turn south at the stench of the Salton Sea. Proceed down Highway 111 to the town of Niland, a broken-down place of limited possibilities. "

Stock up on Longbottom Leaf and ...

Prithee, Party On!: "Checklist for Your Lord of the Rings
DVD Marathon

By Mike Nelson"

InsBot 0.2

InsBot 0.2 is a robot the size of a cockroach.

AbiWord: Take a Tour

AbiWord is an open source, cross-platform, interoperable word processor.

Triaddiner.com

Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point Restaurants: Triaddiner.com Very nice searchable directory of area restaurants. Includes menus, prices, hours, contact info.

Movie Version of Controversial Novel Being Toned Down

Fans of the Philip Pullman novel His Dark Materials have expressed outrage over news that director-screenwriter Chris Weitz (American Pie) has removed references to God and the Catholic church in the movie. Weitz told a website set up by fans of the novel, bridgetothestars.net, that New Line Cinema, the company producing the film, has "expressed worry about the possibility of perceived anti-religiosity." He said that the studio had told him that if the references remained, the project would become "unviable financially." He remarked that he had discussed the matter with Pullman, who had told him that the role of the Authority (God) in his book, could be transformed into "any arbitrary establishment that curtails the freedom of the individual." The religious villains in the film, he said, "may appear in more subtle guises." He added: "you will probably not hear of the 'Church.'" One fan posted a message on the website calling the changes a "blatant cop-out to the Bible Belt of America."

Consumer Reports gives Apple high marks

Yahoo! News - Consumer Reports gives Apple high marks: "With so many of the other companies falling in tech support satisfaction, Consumer Reports concludes, 'companies aren't investing enough in their support operations.'
In contrast, for Apple the organizations says, 'Apple's superiority in all aspects of support, including waiting on the phone and Web support, suggests that it invests its support resources wisely.'
Overall, Apple scored 76/100 in tech support with Dell and Gateway tied for second with 57/100 -- HP and Compaq pulled up the rear with scores of 52/100 and 47/100 respectively.
For repairs and serious problems reported by consumers, Apple again had the best score with just over 10 percent of respondents reporting serious issues. Gateway had the worst record with slightly over 20 percent. Sony, Dell, IBM, HP and Compaq fell in between."

Military Humor

Here is a sample of "213 Things Skippy Can't Do in the U.S. Army":

32. Not allowed to let sock puppets take command of my post.

33. Not allowed to chew gum at formation, unless I brought enough for everybody.

34. (Next day) Not allowed to chew gum at formation even if I *did* bring enough for everybody.

43. Camouflage body paint is not a uniform.

49. Not allowed to trade military equipment for “magic beans”.

84. Must not use military vehicles to “Squish” things.

91. I am not authorized to initiate Jihad.

93. Nerve gas is not funny.

95. I am not in need of a more suitable host body.

109. I am not authorized to change national policy in Eastern Europe.

132. The loudspeaker system is not a forum to voice my ideas.

145. I should not drink three quarts of blue food coloring before a urine test.

146. Nor should I drink three quarts of red food coloring, and scream during the same.

158. The revolution is not now.

173. I am not allowed to create new levels of security clearance.

179. On Army documents, my race is not “Other”.

180. Nor is it “Secretariat, in the third”.

185. My name is not a killing word.

191. Our Humvees cannot be assembled into a giant battle-robot.


Read the rest

Eminem is Right

by Mary Eberstadt - Policy Review, No. 128

"The odd truth about contemporary teenage music — the characteristic that most separates it from what has gone before — is its compulsive insistence on the damage wrought by broken homes, family dysfunction, checked-out parents, and (especially) absent fathers. Papa Roach, Everclear, Blink-182, Good Charlotte, Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam, Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, Tupac Shakur, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Eminem — these and other singers and bands, all of them award-winning top-40 performers who either are or were among the most popular icons in America, have their own generational answer to what ails the modern teenager. Surprising though it may be to some, that answer is: dysfunctional childhood. Moreover, and just as interesting, many bands and singers explicitly link the most deplored themes in music today — suicide, misogyny, and drugs — with that lack of a quasi-normal, intact-home personal past.

To put this perhaps unexpected point more broadly, during the same years in which progressive-minded and politically correct adults have been excoriating Ozzie and Harriet as an artifact of 1950s-style oppression, many millions of American teenagers have enshrined a new generation of music idols whose shared generational signature in song after song is to rage about what not having had a nuclear family has done to them. "

Whatever: The 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time

Excerpt fromWhatever: The 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time: "The Lost Star Trek Christmas Episode: 'A Most Illogical Holiday' (1968)

Mr. Spock, with his pointy ears, is hailed as a messiah on a wintry world where elves toil for a mysterious master, revealed to be Santa just prior to the first commercial break. Santa, enraged, kills Ensign Jones and attacks the Enterprise in his sleigh. As Scotty works to keep the power flowing to the shields, Kirk and Bones infiltrate Santa's headquarters. With the help of the comely and lonely Mrs. Claus, Kirk is led to the heart of the workshop, where he learns the truth: Santa is himself a pawn to a master computer, whose initial program is based on an ancient book of children's Christmas tales. Kirk engages the master computer in a battle of wits, demanding the computer explain how it is physically possible for Santa to deliver gifts to all the children in the universe in a single night. The master computer, confronted with this computational anomaly, self-destructs; Santa, freed from mental enslavement, releases the elves and begins a new, democratic society. Back on the ship, Bones and Spock bicker about the meaning of Christmas, an argument which ends when Scotty appears on the bridge with egg nog made with Romulan Ale.

Filmed during the series' run, this episode was never shown on network television and was offered in syndication only once, in 1975. Star Trek fans hint the episode was later personally destroyed by Gene Roddenberry. Rumor suggests Harlan Ellison may have written the original script; asked about the episode at 1978's IgunaCon II science fiction convention, however, Ellison described the episode as "a quiescently glistening cherem of pus." read more

Tolerance Quote > Right Wing Stuff | CafePress

>"Tolerance is the virtue of a man without convictions"--G.K. Chesterton.

Buy Right Wing Stuff from CafePress

Dissecting Leftism

Dissecting Leftism: "Leftists have a desperate need to prove that they are right. Conservatives are just interested in the facts "

Online Etchasketch

Elf

Clusty the Clustering Engine

Clusty the Clustering Engine New search engine clusters your results by categories roughly gleaned from their context. I searched for "Netflix" and the results were clustered by "blogs", "dvd rental", "history", etc. These allow you to view your results according to what cluster they fall in. Provides some very interesting viewing. Has a variety of search tabs, like "gossip" or "encyclopedia", which narrow your search for you.

German iPod clone

DAPreview.net: Review / Medion MD 95200 Review Last week, one of the special offers at Aldi Markets in Northern Germany was for a new 20gb DAP, the MD 95200. The player is distributed by Medion, like most consumer electronics at Aldi. It was kind of a surprise since there was no word of the device before it went on sale and because there isn't much information about it on the web or anywhere else.

Probably the first thing you notice about the Medion Jukebox is that it looks a lot like an Apple iPod that's been dressed in black. The touch-wheel controller has been a signature element of the iPod, and only the iPod, as Apple is usually agressive in protecting their patented design. We're not sure how this one snuck in under the radar, or if there's any issue with the design in the limited area where it's being sold.

It turns out that the similiarities are more than skin deep. The Medion Jukebox shares the same chipset and software used in the iPod, made by PortalPlayer (as stated in a recent REVIEW at the German news website Heise.de). However, while the iPod is expensive (325 Euro), the Medion Jukebox has a price tag of only 199 Euro, making it one of the cheapest devices available in Europe with a 20gb, 1.8-inch hard drive. It also comes with an impressive 36-month warranty.

As you might expect, the limited number of units were sold out quickly, and about the only place to get it now is on eBay.de where the price is higher (eBay listings: LINK).

Besides the new player, we've learned that Medion also plans to open an online music store (www.medionmusic.com), like the iTunes Music Store for iPods. The device supports WMA DRM type files to facilitate secure downloading.

No service fee Tivo box !

Via Kevin Kelly -- Cool ToolsThis device, which you connect to your TV, allows you to digitally record up to 80 hours of TV, which you can then play back at your leisure, without the monthly Tivo subscription fee.

Survival Guide to Homelessness: Introduction to the Project

This is what the American pioneer spirit is all about:

"I spent nearly five years, from mid-1996 to the beginning of 2001, homeless, or as I liked to call it with a distributed household. I had storage, shelter, mailbox, telephone, shower, bathroom facilities, cooking equipment, and transportation, even access to television, radio, computer equipment, and ac power. I had the essence of a home. It was simply more geographically scattered than is traditional in our culture."

Read it:

Philips 30PW850H - TV - CRT - 30" user opinions - CNET Shopper.com

Attention: Stalkers

My New TV I paid slightly less.