It really pleases me to see the WWE TV writers working on the WWE’s press releases. That’s just a hugely impressive document. It starts out pretty sane, discussing some WWF strongarm tactics, but around about the third paragraph it takes a sharp left into a very odd place. “The demand was contained in a letter sent by a Mr. Michael Rogers, an English Barrister who has resided in Switzerland for 30 years and who holds no Swiss license to practice law. Rogers is held out to be the Fund’s ‘Legal Advisor.’” ...

I picked up the Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys DVD last week, and watched it over the weekend. I’d managed to miss it in the theaters, since although Jodie Foster is a strong selling point for me, Todd McFarlane is not. However, after watching Igby Goes Down I was pretty pleased at the thought of watching Kieran Culkin again. Not a bad little movie. Not great — it probably overreaches at the end, in terms of plot — but pretty good. The core of the movie is the nature of teenage desire and ennui, and if you forgive the twist at the end you won’t have much to complain about. I think the actors did a great job of nailing the complexity of first love, teenage sexuality, and the sheer boredom that leads one to be a complete idiot. ...

The International Children’s Digital Library is a pretty cheering concept. I bet it gets more traffic from adults than children, though. Um, by which I mean adults who want to read the books themselves. Current computer screens are not the best technology for reading books to kids.

Jeremy Bowers writes on the hidden dangers (original) of Bayesian spam filters. Core of the argument: spammers can use any possible filter mechanism to fine tune their spam, and since the Bayesian filter is the best we have, once it fails we’re doomed. However, if you’re trying to sell me something, you have to either a) market it in the body of the message, or b) give me a URL to look at. Here’s the simple algorithm for filtering spam with URLs in it: if the sender is in my address book, let it through. Otherwise, mark it as possible spam. Jeremy neglects to consider the possibility of personalized filters which by their nature can’t be duplicated by spammers, since they rely on information that only I have. ...

Bring me the brains of Baader-Meinhof (original). They’ve gotta just be misplaced; what would someone do with them? But man, it prompts weird imaginings.

Polly Toynbee’s article on Afghanistan one year later is excellent reading, and her writings may be instructive to those who assume that opposition to war on Iraq only comes from dedicated leftist pacifists. It’s clear from her article that the citizens of Afghanistan are really glad that the Taliban is gone, and going in was the right thing. She also reminds us that there’s more to do. ...

This (original) is much closer to what I want than Microsoft’s Tablet PC. Not quite there, cause I still want the keyboard, but pretty close. There’s nothing really aweinspiring about the technology; it’s just X Windows for Microsoft. Still pretty sexy. There’s actually no reason Apple couldn’t do something like this for the Mac, although they’d need to provide remote display capabilities in Aqua. Still, why not? PDF might be a little heavyweight for transmission over WiFi, I suppose. ...

I’m not really a huge Bob Woodward fan, but Bush at War looks kind of interesting based on this piece. I can’t say I find Bush’s attitude to be inherently distasteful, but I am interested in his management style. “I do not need to explain why I say things. — That’s the interesting thing about being the President. — Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.” ...

Saturday was busy; Sunday was pleasantly quiet. Either way it wasn’t a talkative web weekend for me. I woke up at 4:45 AM on Saturday for some network maintenance at work, which went very well indeed; I went to bed around midnight, after the Ring of Honor show. Lotta video games in between. Sunday I just slept and caught up on movies and watched wrestling. You know how it is. (I feel a little like I should belch around here.) ...

There’s been some discussion of a certain controversial painting (original) of late. Interesting topic. James Lileks claims that a hypothetical “Self-Portrait of a Racial Cleanser” wouldn’t get the same treatment on campus. “The painting would be draped in a day.” How quickly we forget. In 1998, Stephen Hunter trashed Tony Kaye’s American History X in the Washington Post. He called it “rank, repelling hypocrisy.” He accused it of allowing “its fantasy versions of American Nazis to spew their blackest, cruelest vomitus of hatred” while taking “energy and vitality (and ticket-selling notoriety) from the electricity of that hatred.” ...