Okay, if you go to the Fox News site, you can watch the interview. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a way to directly link to the video, so you'll have to find it manually. As of this writing, there's a link on their front page.

And just to let you know, O'Reilly loses. Not necessarily because Moore beat him on the issues, or out-debated him. No, in fact, they both danced around the issues quite a bit. The real reason O'Reilly lost? As per Official Internet Flamewar Rules, the first person to bring Hitler into the discussion loses. It's that simple. Ol' Bill went all in with a big Hitler reference, and the rest is history. Moore 1; O'Reilly 0. Schwing! :)

I don't know if this has aired, but c/o the Drudge Report, here's a transcript of Bill O'Reilly's interview with Michael Moore. Very interesting read. :)

Although George Lucas would have us believe that the vile Galactic Empire's influence was only felt a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Lucas, in addition to being a money-grubbing sell-out, is also a damned liar. Looks like NASA found the Death Star.

As a card-carrying member of the Elite Geek Corps, I have an obligation to be a fan of board games. Now, as fun as a game of Monopoly or Risk can be, I tend to prefer the more abstract board games, as these tend to forgo the random element that can make an otherwise stellar game of Settlers of Catan, Risk, or Magic: the Gathering go terribly awry. Some of my favorites: Go, of course. And chess, in all its, though the only variant I have ever played more than a couple of times is standard Western chess. I also dig Reversi/Othello.

I've been looking into other abstract board games recently. Here are a few that seem interesting to me.

Banana Phone.

I'm currently listening to Autobahn by Kraftwerk. It's beautiful, really. I remember, at GSP, almost four years ago exactly, getting on Ebay on a computer in NKU's computer lab with... someone cool. A girl named Sarah, maybe. Don't recall offhand. Anyway, I saw an import CD of Autobahn on the cheap and I picked it up.

It was at home when I got back. I remember listening to it, in my room. The music was amazing: liquid synthesizers rolling along. The pulsing electronic percussion. Wir fahren auf der Autobahn / Vor uns liegt ein weites Tal / Die Sonne scheint mit Glitzerstrahl. And all I could think of was how happy I had been at GSP. I was afraid I might not be that happy again. And listening to it now, I realize I haven't.

Here is an interesting look at the statistics in this year's upcoming presidential election. Although nation-wide polls have it looking pretty even, a state-by-state breakdown has Kerry ahead by a good margin in terms if electoral votes. That's hopeful!

So what do my readers think? Who's going to win this election? Who do you want to win this election? Who would your dream candidate be and how do you think they'd do if they were in the race?

Me? I'm a pessimist, through and through. I'm afraid Kerry isn't going to be able to handle Bush. And besides, Kerry just strikes me as not really caring, for some reason. Bush cares. He cares about personal vendettas, corporations, crushing civil liberties, oil profits, destroying science, and promoting the agenda of the Religious Right. But at least he cares. Kerry just strikes me as very one-dimensional. And I don't like him. But I'm voting for him, because Bush is just that awful. My dream candidate? Dennis Kucinich's politics with the integrity of John McCain. Would such a candidate win? Probably not: one has to shift so far to the center to win a presidential election in this country that the two salient features of said dream candidate would be all but moot. Oh well.

Post a comment with your opinion!

Update: Fixed the link. This goes to the site's main page, which has the electoral map I wanted to point to in the first place. This one might be subject to change, though, so if it contradicts what I was saying, ignore what I was saying!

Oh my. "Common People" by Pulp is one of my favorite songs of all time (probably top 20, at least). Along with Ben Folds, William Shatner has apparently just covered it.

For anyone interested, here is a free HTML version of the 9/11 Commission Report.

My good friend Tim posted an excellent blog regarding this morning's Fox and Friends, which we were both (un)fortunate enough to watch. Go read what Tim has to say.

My personal view on the topic: Fox continues to pander to their primarily right-wing audience while neglecting their obligation to be, and let's not kid ourselves here, fair and balanced. (And yes, I do think private media agencies have an obligation to be responsible journalists so long as they are presenting themselves as such!) What's worse, they participate regularly in what basically amounts to fear-mongering. After all, as the Broadcast Arm of the Bush White House, Fox News clearly benefits from an America whose citizens are paralyzed by fear.

It makes me sick.

A lovely image.

It's big news in the realm of music: Two of the Big 5 record labels are merging, into what Pitchfork calls "One Grotesque Abomination." Indeed. If the grim predictions are true, and my guess is they are, indie labels should see a new influx of good bands who were, up until now, "lucky" enough to be on a major label. So support those indie labels, folks, and fight media consolidation.

Without sounding too terribly vain, let me just say that I utterly vanquished the SAT Verbals back in the day. 800 flat, baby. But then again, I might not have performed so well if some of the more practical entries from this list were included. After all, this is the kind of stuff college is all about, right?

Math: a subject close to my heart (I am a big geek after all). Slate has an interesting article about the International Math Olympiad. More interestingly, the bulk of the article discusses the questions: is math a sport? What defines an activity as a sport? Most interestingly, there's the inevitable reference to beer pong.

An interesting article on the development of long-term, "Social Infrastructure" software. Give it a read. The article also brings up a point I'd like to make myself.

The web design behind this blog is utterly amazing. I'm duly impressed. Interesting content as well. Righto.

I feel icky linking to Matt Drudge, but this is rather interesting.

In an effort to bring a little more 8-bit NES influence into the blog, I'm introducing a new set of "avatars" for my blog. This is a somewhat cheesy idea, but for some reason, I think it's very cool.

A bit of thanks: Paul/Grapefruit, Haggin's resident "unusual" guy last year, is into editing sprites from video games. Which is a weird hobby, but definitely cool in an old-skool sort of way. So he edited some Dr. Light sprites from NES Mega Man games. So now I have 8-bit Zach sprites! Woo! A glowing review on my blog and a bit o' free webspace to my man for such a kickass item!

I made a few edits to fit my specific avatar needs, but this is essentially the work of the esteemed Paul/Grapefruit. So, without further ado, I present the entire emotional spectrum of 8-bit Zach avatars:

Heh heh. Oh yeah.

So, it looks like, for the second time this week, I'm going to be pulling an all-nighter. This one was pretty much unintentional. Preface: Yet Another Lab Report is due at 8 am this morning. So, at about 8 pm Wednesday, Tim calls saying everyone is getting together at Logan's to do some homework. Of course, I realize that "doing homework" means goofing off and getting about 5% of the intended work actually complete, yet I go anyway.

I manage to actually finish about 25% of the report while (a) kicking ass at Trivial Pursuit, (b) partaking in a bit of Bacchanalian Excess, and (c) generally goofing off with Tim and the boys. So I had a good time, but got little work done.

I get back around 1 am, finish up the lab report by 2:30, but by then, I couldn't really get to sleep. So around 4:00 am, I just get up and start doing laundry, blogging this very blog, and working on some "avatars" for the blog. I'm going to be very sleepy...

In the fine spirit of Fahrenheit 9/11, MoveOn.org is among the sponsors for a new documentary called Outfoxed. Essentially, it's an in-depth look at Fox News and it details the problems inherent in massive corporate-controlled media empires. I'm looking for a torrent as we speak. Should be interesting.

Found an interesting link. Someone ranked the influence of various works of 20th century art via content analysis: the more times a work was referenced in various art/art history textbooks, the higher the rank. The list is interesting, and there were a bunch of pieces I hadn't seen before, and several old favorites that I hadn't seen in a long time. A lot of the links are broken, but if something strikes your fancy, I had good luck with google to fill in the blanks.

Currently listening to: "Technovo" by Volapük. Weird, engaging, interesting instrumental music is fine by me. It's even better when the band name is a reference to an obscure constructed auxiliary language!

Haven't posted in a while, but here's an interesting link.

So, apparently, the government is seeking legislation that would provide a means by which federal elections could be postponed in the case of terrorist attacks. A noble idea, but really, I don't trust Tom Ridge, Dubya, Dick Cheney, or John Ashcroft. At all. So, the idea that they're trying looking to have Congress give them the power to postpone federal elections is rather chilling to me. Shudder.

Yes, dear readers (all one of you. Hi mom!), I've been neglecting the Sector the past few days. It's all good. I spent a long (four days!) weekend at home. Stayed offline most of the time (logged on long enough to check my UK account balance and get in some Kings of Chaos attacks) and haven't found the time to post since getting back. Let me tell you, 7 credit hours during a summer session is bad times. But here's an update.

This weekend: Spent time with family. That was nice, as always. Played some video games, mostly messing around with NHL 2004, which is just about played out as far as I'm concerned.

Did a little work on my lab report for Thursday. Excel is some good. The fill down button makes my life easier. Still have to do the writing and plot a graph and whatnot, but I'm not too worried and I'll finish it up tomorrow night. After posting this, I'm going to do exactly 4 practice problems for Matrix Algebra (wacky Steve Kovacs, the Hungarian Hellion, the Master of Matrices, is giving a quiz!) then log off.

A note: overlong parentheticals make my writing less clear. On the other hand, I appreciate stream-of-conciousness writing and my thought processes are generally wrought with parentheticals. So there.

Hoping to go see some movies this weekend. Saved is at the Kentucky Theater, and looks cool. We might rent some DVDs as well. Someone mentioned an Ace Ventura marathon, but I think that's about as good an idea as my plan during Spring semester to rent early Wrestlemania tapes and have an old-school WWF marathon.