The Splendiferous Zeppelin Escapades of Filliam H. Muffman

Now, I'm no friend of Hollywood, but even stars have love problems. And thankfully there are three celebrity relationships strong enough not only to last but to teach the rest of us: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Benn Afflick and Jennifer Garner, and William H Macy and Felicity Huffman. From their example I have created Stephen's Laws of Love.

Law number one: find someone whose name can be merged with yours to form a marketable nickname. Just like: Brangelina -- Bennifer II -- or -- Filliam H. Muffman.

(At this point Stephen Colbert can no longer keep from laughing and has to put a piece of paper over his face.)

In case you hadn't heard, Vice President Dick Cheney shot a 78-year-old Texas lawyer in the face. Then, after having a heart attack, from his hospital bed, the shooting victim apologized to CHENEY.

"My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice-President Cheney and his family have had to go through this past week. We send our love and respect to them as they deal with situations that are much more serious than what we have had this week."

Yes, sir. I'm sorry my fist collided with your face, sir. I know if only I didn't make you so mad, you wouldn't have to hurt me. I'm sorry. I'll try to do better.

John Dickerson is kind of...well named, it seems, in this Slate piece where his point seems to be that only Republicans have Bush-bashing cred -- because, you see, they used to like him and now they don't. Because if you always hated something, you have less integrity than if you jump on the popular bandwagon when it goes rolling by? Riiiight.

On the other hand, it does mean that Bush-bashing is a bandwagon.

But how to choose among the Bush-haters? Many of the books were pasted together from the clip files of partisan hacks. (These generally read like Mad Libs: "George Bush [adverb] lied every time he opened his mouth about [noun] and asserted a link between [noun] and 9/11.")

It's easy, Dickerson. No Mad Libs required. "George Bush lied every time he opened his mouth." And I don't think that because I'm a partisan hack, I think that because I've seen the words that come out of his mouth. And it seems to me that only a partisan hack would think otherwise. You partisan hack, you.

Proof that Mac OS X has really arrived: it has attack worms. Malicious shell scripts are stored in ZIP archives, which becomes a problem because the Safari web browser is set by default to open ZIP archives. The official recommendation is that Mac users should use Camino or Firefox -- I mean, disable Safari's automatic processing of ZIP archives and other "safe" files.

How this virus works: normally shell scripts begin with a "shebang line" such as "#!/bin/bash" to indicate which interpreter should handle its execution. If the system encounters a script file with no shebang line, the system will automatically execute it using the Terminal. Which seems kind of dumb, actually. It makes me think the relative dearth of viruses attacking Macs has led the programmers to be lazy about that aspect. Further, a shellscript without a shebang line can simply be given a JPG or PNG extension, put into a ZIP file, and then when the ZIP is unpacked it also unpacks a binary administrative file that connects the file with the shell. The target Mac then "knows" automatically how to open that file if it receives that ZIP - it'll take it as totally normal to execute the "jpg file" with the shell. (That's why this particular exploit targets files in archives.)

So, an additional protective measure is to move the Terminal application from /Applications/Utilities into a different folder, because the exploitation data uses absolute paths. (Although if you update your OS you need to move Terminal back to its original location first.)

And, you know, in general, even if you're on a Mac, don't go around will-nilly opening files that come across the net. It seems kind of obvious. But I guess it always needs to be said.

Woman wrestles polar bear -- polar bear loses! Humans rule, woo-hoo!

Cartoons destroy the world follow up: Alternet interview with two cartoonists, Joe Sacco and Art Spiegelman, who come down on opposite sides of the issue. Spiegelman (creator of Maus) is the one I agree with.

I have spent a lot of time soul-searching and still come out on the same side of the equation. If there's a right to make cartoons, there has to be a right to insult, and if there's no right to make cartoons, well, I'm in big trouble. And I think America might be too.

Indeed. One thing that many of the "sensitivity" appeasers seem to have failed to notice, is that the original purpose of the cartoons was explicitly to speak out against the chill of self-censorship where Islam is concerned. They originally appeared in the 30 September 2005 edition of Jyllands-Posten accompanied by the following text (in translation from the Danish):

The Many Faces of Muhammad. Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten has asked members of the Danish association of newspaper cartoonists to draw Muhammad as they see him. 12 out of 40 replied, and we are printing them under their own names.

The modern secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, when they insist that special care is taken not to offend their own religious feelings. This is incompatible with a secular democracy and freedom of expression, where one must be prepared to face scorn or ridicule.

I'm wondering -- just wondering -- why I have to take off my shoes and leave nail clippers at home to fly on an airplane, but foreign governments seem to own all our ports. You know, those places where all those gigantic containers -- which could be full of nuclear bombs, or invading armies -- are stacked.

And furthermore, I'm wondering why Bush -- who seems to think that, in the interests of security, I should cheerfully give up my constitutional rights, torture is justified, and his executive power is without limits -- doesn't think this is a problem. He thinks it is so NOT a problem, in fact, that he has threatened to veto any bill Congress might approve to block the agreement involving the sale of a British port-managing company to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates.

And, even curiouser, this action comes after several years of Iraq war propaganda that has attempted to create a public perception that Arab state = terrorist state. And it has been pointed out that some of the September 11th hijackers used the UAE as an operational and financial base, and the UAE may have been a transfer point for shipments of smuggled nuclear components sent to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

So I'm wondering, why exactly am I taking my shoes off again?