Dean in Seattle this Sunday

Don’t forget, this Sunday is Howard Dean’s stop in Seattle!

Nipping at President Bush’s heels during his West Coast trip is former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who will drop into Portland and then Seattle on Sunday for a rally at Westlake Park.

In the midst of a four-day, 10-city trip he’s calling the “Sleepless Summer Tour,” Dean will attend a 5 p.m. fund-raiser at the Westin Hotel and a rally at Westlake Park from 6:30 to 8 p.m. before jetting off to Spokane on Monday morning.

[…]

As part of his campaign’s use of the Internet, Dean has solicited commitments from supporters to attend each of his rallies, and so far more than 2,250 people have signed up to attend the Seattle rally, Means said.

(via Mathew Gross)

Time for that operation

The Gender Genie is a potentially cute little application that examines a block of text, and uses an algorithm to attempt to determine the sex of the author. According to the authors of the algorithm, it’s supposed to be correct roughly 80% of the time.

To give it a test, I copied the text of my ‘Oh, go ahead and point, it’s okay‘ post, hit ‘submit’…

…and discovered that I’m female.

Hrm.

I never knew.

(via 601am, via Anil)

Oh, lord, now what?

From: Jhdbd @yahoo.com
Date: Mon Aug 18, 2003 21:55:16 US/Pacific
To: Susan
Subject: You and your COLON Lbpqqtvx
Reply-To: Jhdbd @yahoo.com

I think I preferred the never-ending stream of Viagra spam, to be honest.

A little bit of magic

Got a question that only an elf could answer? If you’re in Minneapolis, stop by and ask Mr. Little Guy.

Four-year-old Shira Rabkin wanted to ask just the right questions, so she thought long and hard.

“Dear Mr. Little Guy,” she finally scrawled in big letters across a sheet of paper. “Do you like mints?” After some more pondering, she added, “and going to Camp Snoopy? Love, Shira.”

Mr. Little Guy was nowhere in sight this early August evening, so Shira stuffed her letter behind his door at the base of a hollowed out ash tree. It’s always open, and always full – of letters, pens, flowers and coins.

The elusive elf has enchanted Twin Citians ever since the 6-inch wooden door appeared eight years ago, just off a walking path around popular Lake Harriet. Double takes led to messages, and messages to answers – and somehow Mr. Little Guy keeps up, responding to the queries in typed notes half the size of business cards.

(via Prairie)

Warning: These hurt!

Many thanks to Kirsten for sending these my way. I got quite a few laughs out of this list, myself.

And just remember…

…the beauty of the pun is in the “oy…” of the beholder.

Two peanuts walk into a bar. One was a salted.

A jumper cable walks into a bar. The barman says, “I’ll serve you, but don’t start anything.”

A sandwich walks into a bar. The barman says, “Sorry we don’t serve food in here.”

A dyslexic man walks into a bra.

A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says, “A beer please, and one for the road.”

Two aerials meet on a roof, fall in love, get married. The ceremony wasn’t much but the reception was brilliant.

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other, “Does this taste funny to you?”

“Doc, I can’t stop singing ‘The green, green grass of home.'” “That sounds like the Tom Jones syndrome.” “Is it common?” “It’s not unusual.”

Two cows standing next to each other in a field. Daisy says to Dolly, “I was artificially inseminated this morning.” “I don’t believe you,” said Dolly. “It’s true, no bull!” exclaimed Daisy.

A guy walks into the psychiatrist wearing only Glad Wrap shorts. The shrink says, “Well, I can clearly see you’re nuts.”

Two hydrogen atoms walk into a bar. One says, “I’ve lost my electron.” The other says, “Are you sure?” The first replies, “Yes, I’m positive…”

A man takes his Rottweiler to the vet and says, “My dog’s cross-eyed, is there anything you can do for him?” “Well,” says the vet, “let’s have a look at him.” So he picks the dog up and examines his eyes, then checks his teeth. Finally, he says “I’m going to have to put him down.” “What?, Because he’s cross-eyed?” “No, because he’s really heavy.”

Apparently, 1 in 5 people in the world are Chinese. And there are 5 people in my family, so it must be one of them. It’s either my mum or my dad…or maybe my older brother Colin. Or my younger brother Ho-Cha Chu. But I’m pretty sure it’s Colin.

I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn’t find any.

I went to the butcher’s the other day and I wanted to bet him 50 dollars he couldn’t reach the meat off the top shelf. He said, “No, the steaks are too high.”

A man came ’round in a hospital after a serious accident. He shouted, “Doctor, doctor, I can’t feel my legs!” The doctor replied,”I know you can’t, I’ve cut your arms off”.

I went to a seafood disco rave last week…and pulled a mussel.

Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly. But when they lit a fire in the craft, it sank, proving once and for all that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.

A man walks into doctor’s office. “What seems to be the problem?” asks the doc. “It’s…um…well…I have five penises.” replies the man. “Blimey!” says the doctor, “How do your trousers fit?” “Like a glove.”

Experience level

This just popped into my head. Earlier this week, I described my level of computer experience as “somewhere between ‘power user’ and ‘geek’ — in other words, I know enough to be dangerous, but not enough to get paid for it.”

It amused me at the time, and I meant to blog it, but I didn’t then. But now I remembered, so I did. Whee. I’m sure you’re all fascinated, just utterly fascinated.

I’m going away again now.

Howard Dean…spammer?

Will all due respect, someone in the Dean Team needs to get this issue sorted out quickly. There’s a growing hubbub over the apparent fact that the Dean campaign at one point contracted with two e-mail vendors who then started spamming Dean campaign e-mails to people who had not requested them.

While it appears that the Dean campaign has discontinued their contract with the vendors (according to this /. comment), a single comment left in the midst of a /. thread, which I only found because it was linked to from Joy’s post, isn’t going to be seen by many people, and I’ve seen this issue get mentioned on more and more blogs (like this one) each day.

I’d suggest that the Dean campain make an official statement on their weblog. While it may make for momentary run of slightly bad press, it won’t be nearly as bad as if the meme of ‘Howard Dean as spammer’ continues to spread.

[Update]{.underline}
[This C|Net story] on the controversy, dated 8/18/03, leads off with the statement from the Dean campaign admitting their mistake and reiterating that they have cancelled their account with the e-mail vendors in question.

Howard Dean’s presidential campaign acknowledged on Monday that it had spammed an undisclosed number of people with unsolicited political advertisements.

The campaign said Dean, the former Democratic governor of Vermont, remained opposed to unsolicited bulk e-mail and blamed the spamming on two contractors who had promised to contact only people who had specifically requested to receive the advertisements.

“We recently contracted with two vendors who made assurances that their lists were opt-in only,” the campaign said in an e-mail to CNET News.com. “On Tuesday, August 12th, Dean for America received notification from a supporter that spam was being sent. We terminated our relationship with both vendors immediately.”

Hopefully this all settles down soon. In my view, it was definitely a mistake, but mistakes happen.

Update:

Wired also has a story about this, mentioning that there were two waves of spam messages sent out, and the second didn’t seem to actually originate from the Dean campaign.

As for the Dean for America campaign, staffers there are less concerned with where the second message came from than with how to handle the aftermath of the first one.