I Didn't Know That Dept.

Who needs a job, I learn something new every day on the intertubes.
Case in point, reading about Anonymous' recently announced plan to attack the Koch brothers, I am led from the subject of DoSs (denial of service attacks, which is how Anonymous retaliated against the credit card companies that had refused to handle money for Wikileaks) to black faxes to lace cards, the earliest form of computer sabotage, not outmoded of course.
Reminds me of the girl, physics major, who rigged all the phones in the dorm to ring at 4 a.m.
Wonder where she is now. Her mistake was in not remaining anonymous.
I've been fascinated by the idea of cyberterrorism ever since I saw Richard Clarke, the former White House cyber security expert, discuss it on Frontline following 9/11.
There is now credible evidence that we did, indeed, fuck with Iran's nuclear program.
But from what I remember reading at the time, we had to have a real person or persons able to physically implant something inside something, so not totally cyber.
And we have pilots flying cyberdrones against AQ in Afghanistan.
Wonders.

Stagecoach Mary

Where would Contrarienne be without MetaFilter? Nowhere, that's where.

"Mary Fields was born in 1832, into slavery in Tennessee, where she was friends with the farm owner's daughter. She was taught to read and write while a slave, and stayed on Judge Dunn's farm for some while following emancipation. Her childhood friend, Dolly Dunn, went on to become a Ursiline nun. Dolly Dunn, then known as Sister Amadeus, invited Mary Fields to join her at the Ursuline convent in Toledo, Ohio. Sister Amadeus was soon assigned to become the headmistress at a convent in Montana, where she fell ill with pneumonia. Mary Fields hadn't first traveled out with Sister Amadeus, but now went to help her sick friend recover. After her friend, now Mother Amadeus, was better, Mary decided to stay on and help the nuns repair the building. Unfortunately, Mary was too hot-tempered, and thought to set a bad example for the children (or maybe the men in town were tired of her out-earning them, and maybe she shot a man in self defense), but she was sent away from the mission, with some financial backing from Mother Amadeus. Mary started a cafe, but was a poor cook with a big heart, and the restaurant ran out of money in short order. She was given a mail route that she ran for eight years, where it was her toughness and reliability that earned her the nickname Stagecoach Mary. She also earned her reputation for being tougher than most any man, out-shooting, out-drinking and out-working them all. After her stagecoach days, Mary was in her 70s, so she took it easy and opened a laundry service, though it's said she spent more time at the saloon than at the laundry shop. She also spent time in her garden, where she'd collect flowers to present to the local baseball team. For every game, she would fix buttonhole bouquet for the members of each team and five large bouquets for each of those who made home runs. She also offered her services as a babysitter for $1.50 a day, which she'd then spend on the little ones."

A New Species

Pre-adults. I'd like to see some numbers about this social phenom and I hope the book has them. But, yeah, from what I can see of pop culture and the youngers in my vicinity, it's true. And troubling. And a function of our (false) prosperity. So about to go down the toilet anyway.

Snow Makes A Guy Hungry

It Is Not Snowing Today. Yet.

I Can't Help It

I have a new toy.

I CAN HAZ U TUBES?

YAZ U KAN

I Didn't Know That Dept.

While you might think of coffee as merely a good caffeinated drink, the seeds of the Coffea plant represent the second most important legally traded commodity, following oil, in terms of dollar value, writes Mark Pendergast in Uncommon Grounds.

Stephen Pinker Explains Egypt

at about 8:40. Also, why things went the way they did at that meeting with my bosses. Although I guess I kinda knew it, it's nice to have it explained to me.
Hint: You can't take it back, it's out there.

Ziggy! Ziggy! Up You Lazy

OOh, whoozamamababywhooza.

Winston! Still now, Winston. Whoozawoozaaw.http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/16/sports/20110216-westminster-dog-show-parade.html?src=me&ref=general#/0_90

Kabuki, Long Game, Whatever

Andrew links to Ezra on this and, frankly, it's about as much as I want to know or think about this. If you want more, you can always click the link.

Shearing

My friend, I'll call her Shelley, and I were sophisticated jazz fans at 14 because of our fathers. My father had been a Big Band man, Basie and Glenn Miller and the two guys whose names I'll remember in 20 minutes who arranged for Miller before breaking out on their own. I wish I had those records now.
Her father was a jazz DJ at a local Milwaukee station.
We decided we would attend the George Shearing concert when he came to town, get dressed up and take the bus down and back all by ourselves. And we did.
We wore identical pleated white polyester skirts, which were in style at the time. Every girl in our school had one.
Shelley was a cool girl and fat like me, so we had that. And jazz. But for some reason, we did not become close. Maybe it was the year I moved to Omaha and it was cut short. In which case, I was 15.
(Sauter-Finnegan, their names were Sauter and Finnegan and their band was the Sauter-Finnegan band.)
Shearing was great. You could hear him, blind, kind of humming while he played.
I listened to the record we had of him all the time.

Purely Coincidental

15 Things Kurt Vonnegut said better than anyone else.
And so it goes. They leave out the and, so I guess it's my own little Vonnegut mash-up.

Summer Will Come

OMG, I'm Back!

Only a week? Felt like a year.




MeFiers have some interesting discussion of this song, which still gives me chills lo these many years later. Sex on a stick, as they say.
I have no pop music awareness, really, or interest except when they hit on something and then I love to read about it.

A Reagan Primer

In the WaPo of all places.

Frisbee Alternative

I guess I need a tetherball set now. And another corgi.

I Miss Deadwood Because It Was Great Drama

but also this (NSFW)

And They've All Got Facebook Pages

No Comment

anything at all would be superfluous.

A Crocodile
by Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Hard by the lilied Nile I saw A duskish river-dragon stretched along, The brown habergeon of his limbs enamelled With sanguine almandines and rainy pearl: And on his back there lay a young one sleeping, No bigger than a mouse; with eyes like beads, And a small fragment of its speckled egg Remaining on its harmless, pulpy snout; A thing to laugh at, as it gaped to catch The baulking merry flies. In the iron jaws Of the great devil-beast, like a pale soul Fluttering in rocky hell, lightsomely flew A snowy trochilus, with roseate beak Tearing the hairy leeches from his throat.