Get Cynical

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An Austrian hacker earned the dubious distinction of writing what are thought to be the first known viruses for Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Vista operating system. Written in July, the viruses take advantage of a new command shell, code-named Monad, that is included in the Windows Vista beta code.

The viruses were published last month in a virus-writing tutorial written for an underground hacker group calling itself the Ready Ranger Liberation Front, and take advantage of security vulnerabilities in the new command shell. Unlike the traditional Windows graphical user interface, which relies heavily on the mouse for navigation, command shells allow users to use powerful text-based commands, much like Windows’ predecessor, DOS.

Keep an eye out for other people who have been sick at work and use the ‘I must have gotten it from …’ excuse.

The Media Mirror is an interactive video installation, in which 200+ channels of live cable television are continuously arranged in real-time to form a mosaic representation of the person that stands in front of it.

In the pupillary light reflex, shining a light in the eye causes nerve signals to go from the eye to the brain and then back the eye again, telling the pupil to constrict. In the usual sneeze reflex, tickling the nose causes nerve signals to go from the nose to the brain and then back out to the nose, mouth, chest muscles and everything else involved in the actual sneeze. The key point is that the nerve signals take complicated routes through the brain, but usually the pupillary light reflex and sneeze reflex take different routes. Apparently what happens in sun-sneezers is that shining a bright enough light in the eye ALSO sends nerves signals from the eye to the brain and then back out to the nose, mouth and chest! In short, the wires are crossed a little bit in some people, and so shining a light in the eye “accidentally” activates two different outgoing pathways.

On November 8, 1939, George Elser, a swiss clock maker who had worked in Germany for several years and bitterly resented the Nazi stranglehold on labour unions, decided to kill Hitler by placing a time bomb in one of the columns behind the podium where Hitler was to give a speech in the Burgerbrau Beer Celler. Set to detonate at preciesly 9.20pm on Wednesday, Nov. 8. At 8.10 Hitler enters the beer hall but at 9.12pm he suddenly ends his speech and departs. Eight minutes later the bomb explodes killing eight people and wounding sixty-five. Elser is later arrested and confined to the concentration camp at Sachsenhousen for six and a half years. Two weeks before the war ended in Europe, Elser was executed by the SS.

Puhleez! The capital I without the crossbars top and bottom is either the laziest piece of design in history, or an elegant stroke of modernism. With the crossbars it’s just clunky, boring and awkward. The lowercase i is kind of cute with that little dot, I suppose, but I’m not really buying it. This one should have never made it out of the comp stage.

WACO, Texas — President Bush is getting the kind of break most Americans can only dream of: nearly five weeks away from the office, loaded with vacation time.

The president departed yesterday for his longest stretch yet away from the White House, arriving at his Crawford ranch in the evening for a round of clearing brush, visiting with family and friends, and tending to some outside-the-Beltway politics. It is the longest presidential retreat in at least 36 years.

The August getaway is Bush’s 49th trip to his cherished ranch since taking office and the 319th day that Bush has spent, entirely or partially, in Crawford — nearly 20 percent of his presidency to date, according to Mark Knoller, a CBS Radio reporter known for keeping better records of the president’s travel than the White House itself. Weekends and holidays at Camp David or at his parents’ compound in Kennebunkport, Maine, bump up the proportion of Bush’s time away from Washington even further.

Bush’s long vacations are more than a curiosity: They play into diametrically opposite arguments about his leadership style. To critics and late-night comics, they symbolize a lackadaisical approach to the world’s most important day job, an impression bolstered by Bush’s two-hour midday exercise sessions and his disinclination to work nights or weekends.

On Wednesday August 03, 2005, this area will be under tight security. President George W. Bush will be arriving by Helicopter at a landing zone across the street from Fire Station #1….

The part of the security measures that may concern you is that no one will be allowed to be standing on the apartment patios or even looking out of the windows toward the landing zone (You wouldn’t want to be confused for a sniper trying to harm the President)…