Is Edwards the Daddy?

Say what you will about them, the Enquirer has been right about this affair so far:

In denying he fathered Rielle's baby, Edwards told ABC that he would "be happy" to take a paternity test to prove he's telling the truth. (He has refused numerous previous requests by The ENQUIRER to take a paternity test.)

Edwards claimed he ended the affair in 2006, but sources say he restarted the illicit romance after confessing to his wife.

Rielle soon became pregnant after the affair was rekindled, say sources.

The ongoing ENQUIRER investigation has also confirmed that he has been with Rielle and the baby three times this year in California.

We will have to wait for Edward's blue dress evidence, but what interests me isn't the actual paternity. I wonder how Edwards could put himself in the position to father a child with this woman when it's well documented that children born in single parent households face a much greater risk of poverty. Remember the two Americas, John? Most often the division is between single parent and two parent families. Yet you weren't concerned with a child being born into an at-risk situation?

And you were the guy who was going to fix the two Americas?

Why Photoshop a Golf Course?

The above screen grab was sent to me by Pat (Riotic).... it's supposedly an aerial view of a golf course in Holland. What's odd is the repeating pattern in the trees. Being a practitioner of clumsy photoshop myself, I spotted it right away.

So the question is: Why the heck clone trees on a golf course? Fortunately, a little digging revealed the answer: The Dutch are ashamed of their crop circles. Obviously their drunken teenagers don't do as polished a job of it as ours do:

as always, d'oh! clickabiggen

Before and After

Pretty good idea: same picture, years later.

Clickabiggen

Bummer

It was an exciting headline: Nepal looks for girl to serve as new "living goddess", But then I read the article and find out that both the wife and Michelle Malkin are too old for the job. Darn, I had letters of recommendation ready to go out.

Oh well.

Baby Kissing

Poor Al Franken. It's hard to be a politician when you can't kiss babies.


Course, many grown-ups have a problem with him too.


"He works better from a stage, behind a microphone. Maybe it'd be best if he stayed home and sent out campaign pamphlets."

Top Level Adviser

Remember the stories of Barack Obama having an e-mail relationship with Scarlett Johansson? (OK, full disclosure, if she would only answer me, and drop the restraining orders, I would have an e-mail relationship with her too) Now we read:

Democratic Party insiders have revealed that Clooney and Obama regularly send texts and emails to each other and speak by phone at least twice a week.

One said last night: ‘They are extremely close. A number of members of the Hollywood community, including Brad Pitt, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, offered to help raise funds for Barack but it was with George that he struck up this amazing affinity.

‘George has been giving him advice on things such as presentation, public speaking and body language and he also emails him constantly about policy, especially the Middle East.

‘George is pushing him to be more “balanced” on issues such as US relations with Israel.

'George is pro-Palestinian. And he is also urging Barack to withdraw unconditionally from Iraq if he wins.

Is this a pattern? Are all the O's advisers movie stars? Maybe that's why he thinks that properly inflating tires can save as much oil as we would gain by the proposed new drilling. I think it's time that someone in the Obama campaign informed the candidate that making a movie on a subject does not make you an expert on that subject. Clooney is an expert on the movies he's made; he's not an expert on the Middle East.

Thanks a Lot, Hackers

The Defcon conference is the wild and woolly version of Black Hat for the unwashed masses of hackers. It always has its share of unusual hacks. The oddest so far is a collaborative academic effort where medical device security researchers have figured out how to turn off someone’s pacemaker via remote control.

I understand that it's cool to tinker, and fiddle, and figure things out. It's fun. But couldn't you guys have figured out how make diamonds with a Sears trash compactor instead?

I do, by the way, have a pacemaker. And I'm not really concerned that some kid, inspired by these guys, is going to write a kill program for my pacemaker. What I am concerned about is that some kid will write a program to make the pacer stutter, or to steal information from the device, but, whoops, writes a bad line of code and instead sends the pacer into defib mode and all of the sudden, some guy who was just strolling down the boardwalk ends up jolted to the top of the popcorn machine.

The researchers are thinking they're doing everyone a favor by forcing the device makers to use encryption, except for: wrong. You can't use encryption when every emergency room and heart Dr's office needs to be able to access the device, quickly, at a moments notice. You think the emergency room has time to hunt down the key? And not everyone uses their dog's name as a password or encryption key generator. "Give him another amp of epinephrine and find out his dog's name. Stat!"

You just can't make the programming secure and still have it accessible to those who need to access it. And anyone trying to figure it out is putting old farts at risk. I mean, this isn't the kind of thing you could test on little sis's computer. You want to see if it's working, you have to go out and find a device.... and most of them are attached to old guys in Bermuda shorts.

But, really, why I posted..... Look at the graphic on that pacemaker. Why do you think it's there? The thing spends just a little time under the surgical teams eyes and then it's gone, under skin for a few years - next stop: trash can. But they put a fair amount of effort into making it look impressive. OK, so it's cool looking. But you need a pocket knife to show it to anybody. And who's going to be impressed by that anyway?

Something is Broken

The "Something is Broken" blogger help group is where you go when the blogspot drunkobot labels you as spam, so I've been frequenting it for the last several weeks, trying to get them to whitelist me. (the general idea is to plead with them until they get tired of seeing your messages) Anyway, the above is what you get now if you try to access "Something is Broken" -- It's broken.

Next week? It will be: "We encountered an error when trying to access the page that tells you that the "Something is Broken" group is broken."

Georgia on My Mind

Anyone who doesn't think Putin is still running Russia has some serious gullibility problems. Invading Georgia is no little thing. Let's hope it isn't just the first (second really) step in the reassembly of the USSR.

In the meantime there's good-news/bad-news: Good news: Georgia news is getting out via Blogspot. Bad news: It's Blogspot so they'll probably be labeled a spam-blog by one of Blogspot's drunken spambot robots, then spend a month trying to get the classification corrected.

Flash the O Sign

Maybe I should wait for the "O hands" to catch on before putting this thought in your head. I don't know about you, but I can visualize Michael Moore and Barbra Streisand flashing each other the Sign of the Strangled Baby as they cross paths in Hollywood. "Infanticide be with you, Barbra," then, "And also with you, Michael."