I haven’t picked on Andrew Sullivan for a while, have I? (And why do I do it? Because he keeps getting held up as an example of modern conservative thought, that’s why.) Let’s start with this condemnation of Dianne Feinstein (scroll down a bit). I can swing to that rhythm. Feinstein is one of my least favorite Senators. So, she said something dumb… which Andrew inflates into a commentary on all Democrats everywhere. Sure, OK. Dianne’s a prominent Democrat. ...

My DSL is up and running, a day early (and less than a week after I ordered it). Even happier, the speed is up to snuff — a quick test suggests that I’m getting 1280/585Kbps speeds, which is darned close to the 1500/786Kbps I was promised. Since the test server is in LA, I’m not going to worry about the lossage. It’s certainly much faster than my Pacifica PacBell speeds. ...

Hm. You know, I guess it is illegal to visit the moon without permission. From the 1979 Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (original): Article 14 1. States Parties to this Agreement shall bear international responsibility for national activities on the moon, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non- governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in this Agreement. States Parties shall ensure that non-governmental entities under their jurisdiction shall engage in activities on the moon only under the authority and continuing supervision of the appropriate State Party. ...

I want to see this movie rather badly. Bollywood remakes Reservoir Dogs? Yeah.

Having trouble with Joyce’s Ulysses? There’s hope.

It’s up! Adventure Strips went live today with Mike Barr’s Sorcerer of Fortune — set, of course, in the city of Fortune. What a great title. Also debuting is Ted Stampyak’s Jazz Age. Comics are always free on the day they go up (but subscribe anyhow, cause it’s cheap). Check it out. Athena Voltaire debuts tomorrow. Seriously cool looking stuff.

A California company has been authorized to make the first private moon landing. I have to admit I’m a bit puzzled by this, since the last time I looked it wasn’t illegal to land on the moon. At worst it ought to be necessary to get permits for the launch; why does the U.S. government care where they’re going? And how does the rest of the world feel about the U.S. claiming the right to decide who makes Moon landings? ...

I have moved over to spamprobe for all my spam filtering needs. It’s an implementation of Paul Graham’s Bayesian spam detection algorithm, which detects spam based on word frequency analysis. It requires some training before it works well; you have to feed it a collection of a couple of hundred good messages and a couple of hundred spam messages so that it can build a table of spam words. Or, alternatively, you can train it over time and put up with false negatives and positives for a little while. But once you get those few hundred messages classified, you’re golden. ...

It looks like is getting made into a movie (original). (If I were on the ball I’d hit the extras casting session tomorrow, but time prevents.) The book is excellent and highly recommended; Dennis Lehane has a knack for writing the dark side of Boston while still caring about the city deeply. And I adore his characters. Mystic River departs from his earlier series work, probably (from his interviews) because he didn’t want to get typecast. I think it was a good choice. Kenzie and Genarro are compelling characters, but at some point they’ll get overused. Their relationship is core to the series; how many changes can he ring before it grows stale? ...

Copplestone Casting (original) has several very cool lines of miniatures — the historicals would be great for pulp action. I particularly dig the Back of Beyond (original) line, which covers Central Asia in the 1920s. Read the Web pages at the link back there; the historical information rocks.