News: JPEG worm breaks new ground Terrific! Fo…

News: JPEG worm breaks new ground

Terrific! Forget screensavers and VBS scripts, now we have a virus embedded in a picture file. It’s not dangerous. Yet. But it will be.

Great Moments in Layout June 13, 2002: The WP …

Great Moments in Layout

June 13, 2002: The WP forgets to break a story up into paragraphs.

Scientists Find Solar System Resembling Ours (washingtonpost.com)

Except, you know, not. We aren’t capable of detecting Earth-type planets. They’re too small and too close to the star. Maybe someday, with a new version of the Hubble, we will. But what they found this time was a system with several Jupiter-type gas giants. This is something of an advance, in that in most of the systems previously found the giants were larger and put off more radiation.

CNN.com - Serious flaw in MS server software - Jun…

CNN.com - Serious flaw in MS server software - June 13, 2002

What is this, the third this week?

This Is Hell! Alabama is — you may have heard …

This Is Hell!

Alabama is — you may have heard — kinda hot. And humid. It’s well into the nineties today; it’s been hot all week but this is the first day the humidity has really kicked in.

I’m an indoors kind of guy, and I have one of the ultimate indoors careers: I’m a librarian. Unfortunately, the air conditioning in the library is mostly broken. I’m in the cataloging room, which has its own unit, but in most of the building, it’s extremely uncomfortable. I checked the thermostat (which does work) and it says it’s 87 degrees on the first floor. You can imagine what it’s like upstairs.

What does this mean for me? Well, I have to go upstairs to get books to catalog. And I can’t. It’s just impossible to do anything in the stacks right now except simply exist. I can make one dash upstairs in the morning, that’s about it. (Man, am I whiny.)

Oh, and you can imagine what the heat and humidity are doing for the bindings of the books. Anyone looking for scrap paper?

Spy Pictures Air on Satellite TV It’s great, i…

Spy Pictures Air on Satellite TV

It’s great, isn’t it? Secret government materials sent as microwaves where anyone with a satellite dish can pick them up. These are in the Balkans; I hope the same isn’t true in the Middle East, don’t you?

Yahoo! News - Chinese Fish Sauce May Up Esophageal…

Yahoo! News - Chinese Fish Sauce May Up Esophageal Cancer Risk

Another in our ongoing series “Strange things Asian people eat”. I swear, I don’t look for this stuff, it just keeps appearing serendipitously. Anyway, it appears that eating rotten fish causes throat cancer. So it’s a good thing I don’t eat rotten fish. People who smoked and ate the fish sauce had a particularly high rate, leading me to think that maybe the problem is that people who put disgusting things in their mouths are just prone to cancer.

Security Council holds open meeting on Mideast con…

Security Council holds open meeting on Mideast conflict

Luckily, the Syrians are presiding, so I’m sure the meeting won’t get out of hand. Discussion will be 95% attacks on Israel, punctuated with the usual 5% weak defenses from us, with the occasional veto. Anyone who dissents… Well, the Syrians know how to deal with that.

USATODAY.com - Space station’s robot arm to get wr…

USATODAY.com - Space station’s robot arm to get wrist surgery

Great, the Space Station has carpal tunnel. What’s next, will it need a back brace?

`Predatory’ ministers must go, group says The S…

`Predatory’ ministers must go, group says

The Southern Baptists, the only major American denomination founded to avoid black people, are meeting in St. Louis and

passed a resolution asking spiritual leaders to hold each other accountable to “the highest standards of Christian moral practice,” and for seminaries to emphasize integrity in the training of ministers, missionaries and educators.

I find that my standards of Christian moral practice are fundamentally (ha!) different from those of the Southern Baptist Convention. For instance, I don’t think veiled attacks on another denomination are particularly moral. I certainly don’t agree with the out-and-out anti-Islamic tone of the convention. Or the bit where they called on their followers to pray that all countries convert to Christianity because it’s the only answer to terrorism. Which would come as a great surprise to the IRA, or the Basque separatists. Or Eric Robert Rudolph and Terry Nichols, for that matter.

Beijing Newspaper Retreats, Apologizes for Capitol…

Beijing Newspaper Retreats, Apologizes for Capitol Gaffe

They still don’t understand the concept of the Onion. They seem to think it’s an actual newspaper that occasionally makes things up to boost circulation. Given the state of the world, which is increasingly difficult to parody, I can see why.