Big Brother arrives at University of Delaware

Big BrotherHere’s a scary (and true!) story for your Halloween: it seems that the University of Delaware is now forcing students to undergo “ideological reeducation”! The university is so brazen about it that it even refers to it as a “treatment for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs” in their own materials! It’s so bad that the Foundation for Individual Rights In Education (FIRE) has taken action on it. You can read their press release here, but I’ve excerpted heavily from it below:

Students living in the university’s complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”

The university suggests that at one-on-one sessions with students, RAs should ask intrusive personal questions such as “When did you discover your sexual identity?” Students who express discomfort with this type of questioning often meet with disapproval from their RAs, who write reports on these one-on-one sessions and deliver these reports to their superiors. One student identified in a write-up as an RA’s “worst” one-on-one session was a young woman who stated that she was tired of having “diversity shoved down her throat.”

At various points in the program, students are also pressured or even required to take actions that outwardly indicate their agreement with the university’s ideology, regardless of their personal beliefs. Such actions include displaying specific door decorations, committing to reduce their ecological footprint by at least 20%, taking action by advocating for an “oppressed” social group, and taking action by advocating for a “sustainable world.”

Wow! I can’t say that this surprises me, really. I could see this coming back when I was in college 12 years ago. The sheer brazenness of it is pretty shocking, though. Oh well – as Orwell himself said:

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

“Mad Men” starts again November 1st!

By now you’ve probably noticed that I really like the AMC show Mad Men. It’s a GREAT series, and although it starts off slowly, I promise you you’ll get hooked by the third episode! The good news for those of you that missed it the first time around is that AMC is going to air the series all over again starting this Thursday (November 1st). I honestly hope you’ll check it out – it really *is* a show worth watching!

Mad Men Wallpaper

Free Phone Services from MS, Google

When I was in high school, BellSouth introduced a nifty new service: “fuzzy information”. You could pick up the phone and dial 311 (or was it 611?) and an operator would come on the line. You could then ask for “fuzzy” information, like “are there any Indian restaurants in the 30305 zip code?” or “I’m at 123 Maple Street – what’s the nearest dry cleaners?”. The service was free at first, but then BellSouth scaled it down to “the first 3 calls per month are free, any subsequent calls are 99¢”. Eventually, all calls were 99¢… and the service abruptly disappeared a couple of months later.

Apparently I’m not the only one that missed that service. Both Microsoft and Google have introduced similar services recently, and unlike BellSouth’s offerings, both work nationally and both are free!

Ars Technica has this comparison of both services. In a nutshell, Microsoft’s offerings are supreme for now, although Google’s are nothing to sneeze at, either. If you’d rather skip the article and just try them out yourself, here are the numbers:

GOOG411: 1-800-GOOG-411
LiveSearch411: 1-800-CALL-411

Free Taco Today!

I don’t know if you were paying attention, but Taco Bell entered into a marketing agreement with Major League Baseball where if a base was stolen during the World Series… everyone would get free tacos!

Well, a base was stolen, and today is the day! Just stop in at any participating Taco Bell today (Tuesday, October 30th) between 2pm and 5pm for a free beef crunchy taco! Click here to read all about it!

Making Mincemeat of the Germans

In the opening days of World War II, the Germans enjoyed significant advantages over the Allies in almost every category you can think of. They had more soldiers, better officers, and more of just about any materiel an army would need. So when the war started, the Allies were almost powerless to stop the Nazi machine.

Almost. While the Brits couldn’t keep up with the Germans on the battlefield, they were more than a match for them behind the scenes. Instead of “fighting harder”, the British “fought smarter”. So while the Germans were deploying tanks and troops, the Brits were busy deploying code breakers, spies and helping resistance movements wherever possible. Their experience at “dirty tricks” would come in handy throughout the war – especially when it came time to invade Italy. And that’s where “Operation Mincemeat” comes in.

As the Allies saw it, their first task was to kick the Germans out of North Africa… which is exactly what they did. Their next target was Italy, but this presented a problem. The Allies knew the most logical place to invade Italy was Sicily. But so did the Germans. In fact, everyone in the world knew that Sicily was the Allies’ next target. Churchill himself even said that “[a]nyone but a fool would realize it’s Sicily”. So the question was… how to fool the Germans into thinking the Allies would land somewhere else?

How about taking a corpse, dressing it up as a military officer, handcuffing a briefcase full of “top secret documents” to it and shoving the whole mess into the sea where the Germans were sure to find it?

If that sounds like the plot of a third-rate spy novel… well, yeah. It does. And even though many of his superiors were certain that the plan would fail, Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu was sure that it would work.

Continue reading “Making Mincemeat of the Germans”

Wow!!!

Oh my gosh! Check out this HAWT new picture of Madonna! Sure, it’s photoshopped to hell and back, but man… the woman looks incredible to be 49, no?

Madonna… WOW! (sm)

Click to enlarge

If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go drool now!

Tweaking Tracfone’s Moto w370

Tracfone is America’s largest prepay-only wireless provider. They have good service and great rates for people like me that only talk around 30 minutes a month. Unfortunately, the phones they sell are a bit dated and decidedly low-tech. Their new Motorola w370 looks and feels an awful lot like the RAZR, but unfortunately, it’s crippled in a lot of ways. For example, the box advertises (heh – almost screams about) customizable wallpaper and MP3 ringtones. But, like all things in life, there’s a catch. Although the w370 has a mini-USB port, the phone’s locked, and the USB port doesn’t work. So to the Average Joe, the only way to get customized ringtones or wallpapers is to buy them through Tracfone’s website. The manual even says that explicitly: “Want cool wallpapers and ringtones? Go to Tracfone.com today!” Now, nothing I’m about to tell you is “illegal” or “immoral”… But it’s information that Tracfone usually isn’t very willing to give.

First of all, add the following addresses to your email address book:

myphonenumber@mms.att.net
myphonenumber@txt.att.net

where “myphonenumber” is your full 10-digit Tracfone number. We’ll need these addresses in a minute.

Continue reading “Tweaking Tracfone’s Moto w370”

2 Minute History Lesson: The UK

I’ve been to several different countries in my lifetime, and I’ve formed the opinion that the “average American” is about as smart as the “average Briton” or the “average German”. But one thing Americans as a whole seem to have great difficulty with is the difference between “England”, “Great Britain” and the “United Kingdom”. Americans tend to use these names interchangeably, and this is not correct. So take a couple of minutes to learn the difference:

There is a large island off the northern coast of France. This island – that is, the physical island itself – is known as Great Britain. Great Britain was traditionally divided into two separate countries: England and Scotland. However, Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603 and left no heir. This led to King James VI of Scotland – a descendant of Henry VII through his great-grandmother Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII’s eldest sister – being offered the English crown. James accepted, and became known as King James I in England.

It’s important to understand that although James was king of both countries, the two were still independent nations at the time. England and Scotland each had their own form of parliament, currency, customs procedures, army, navy, legal and educational systems… and all those other things that make one country different from another. King James himself would lead the first movement to unify England and Scotland; although he was unsuccessful, the idea persisted. In 1707, the Act of Union was passed by both the English and Scottish parliaments. With this act, both “England” and “Scotland” ceased to exist, and one nation called the United Kingdom of Great Britain was formed.

Continue reading “2 Minute History Lesson: The UK”

Just for fun!

Happy Friday, everyone!

I don’t normally post downloadable music on this site, mainly ‘cos I don’t want the Music Police breaking my door down. But I will make an exception for this Duran Duran bootleg I picked up on the ‘Net the other day. It’s from an radio show called “The Source” (no, I hadn’t heard of it either). Apparently “The Source” was part of NBC Radio’s “Young Adult Network”, for what that’s worth.

Anyway, the show was recorded live on November 16, 1982 at Hammersmith Odeon in London. Here’s the track list:

01. Introduction
02. (Waiting for the) Nightboat
03. New Religion
04. Save a Prayer
05. Planet Earth
06. Friends of Mine
07. Careless Memories
08. Rio
09. Hungry Like the Wolf
10. Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)
11. Girls on Film
12. Outro

The music files are in MP3 format, 192kbps CBR. Also included are scans of the album’s “artwork” (it’s a generic NBC Radio sleeve with program notes on it) as well as the actual disc label. A 500×500 version of the disc label pic has been embedded into the ID3 tag… ‘cos that’s how I roll.

Click here to download the zip file
(97.7 MB)

Sorry folks! The file has been deleted.
Not by court order or anything – I just didn’t want it on the server any more.