In an amusing discovery, another website, noted that you get interesting results when you search for more evil than satan himself at google.com. In another bit of distraction, you can take a Virtual Tour of an abandoned nuclear missile sile And, there are now author trading cards. You know you’ve arrived when you get your own trading card. So, who do I have to bribe? And, of course, the site is indexed and ready to go. Saw something here and you want to find it again? Cheesy Drum Roll, please! Use our nifty-neato search widget. It’s politely waiting in the upper right corner. Enjoy. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

The Texas Poet Laureate NOW! site is essentially complete, giving you access to lots of information, flyers and petitions to print, and even a form to sign the electronic petition or nominate someone. We’ve added a search engine to our site. You’ll see the little search gadget in the upper right corner of the page. The site should be indexed soon. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

We’ve finally cleaned up and archived this year's past news. So, the site should load much faster now. In another round of post-columbine weirdness, a 7th grader in a school district in the outer Dallas suburbs wrote –at his teacher’s request– a "scary" story in which two classmates and his teacher were shot. Seems a reasonable idea for a scary story given all the school shootings recently. The teacher gave him a 100. A judge gave him a week in jail on suspicion of making "terroristic threats." This story’s too weird to be fiction If you’re curious about how good those cookies (November 8) are, someone’s promised to take a batch to a party and let us know. Let’s see if they can be talked into giving at least a brief review. And finally, a quote: "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." — Albert Einstein Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

Were you thinking it was a slow news day? Well, we're here to confirm it. All we’ve got to point out is a bunch of minor updates all over our site and a great story involving Neiman Marcus and their (formerly) very expensive cookie formula. Enjoy. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

If you’re keeping track, you can catch Tim Wood at a couple of events over the next two weeks. He’ll be at the slam in St. Louis on Halloween and at the Texas Book Festival –November 5– with a group of Dallas poets. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

Okay, we’ve been slacking on the news again. We’ve added a site for a group of poets that meets regularly in Dallas: the Oak Cliff Circle of Poets. The page of our own Tim Wood has also been updated. EmailAddresses.com is a site that indexes all the free email services on the web. The list is frighteningly exhaustive giving a description of each, who they cater to and any downsides –like someone’s advertising. If you want to start hosting free email on your webpage, check out Out Blaze, which let’s you put free email on your site without costing you a penny. Cool, eh. There has been a Texas Poet Laureate post since the 43rd Texas legislature authorized the post in 1933. Given that the first person’s term began in 1932, we suspect the story is interesting, but we haven't found it yet. If you want to see the list, check out Texas Poets Laureate List. More importantly, why hasn’t there been one since 1994 and only one since the last decade? If you live in Texas and this seems a little disconnected from the caliber of our poetry community, you can Write or Email Governor Bush. In the midst of everything else, it’s a small matter, but take a moment, write a letter. And think, if enough people take ten minutes and write, it might just get someone in that post. You might let us know. I’d like to see how many people write our Governor. We’ve even started … Continue reading 1999-10-24 →

Okay, you’re back from a nice three day weekend and the boss… well he’s the boss. He had a loosy weekend. And then he spotted you. Well, just click on over to Punch John Tesh and let him have it. John won’t mind, really. And you’ll feel better. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

One phenomenon on the web that’s interesting is the large communities that develop. Linux is the most publicized example. A less publicized effort cracked the DES data encryption standard. The most intriguing just might be The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence at Home. No, in spite of the name, they don’t aim to prove that marriage does not invariablly kill all brain cells. Instead, they are harnessing the unused time –say at night– of over a quarter of a million Workstations, PC and Macs to help analyze the huge amount of information collected in the search for intelligence beyond the Earth. On the site, they have full information on joining the effort. And your computer might just be the lucky winner, too. We’ve Added weather information for about a dozen major U.S. cities courtesy of The Weather Channel. The information is drawn automatically from there site. We love always being able to pull up a weather forecast, but navigating their site can be a pain. We decided it was easier to have a handful of key forecasts at hand… Click on over or use the link on our navigation bar. Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

This past weekend, Australia’s Spy Chief acknowledged that five countries jointly monitor international calls and faxs, as well as nearly all email. The project –Echelon– involves the US (NSA), Australia (DSD), UK, Canada (CSE) and New Zealand. Echelon automatically runs these communications through a computer dictionary so that messages of interest can be reviewed by analysts. As an example, it might grab messages that include words such as bomb, sigint, Intelsat, terrorist, terrorism, weapons proliferation, North Korea, economic intelligence, marijuana, cocaine, opium, Kojarena, Pakistan, nuclear weapons, Shoal Bay, Waihopai, Sugar Grove, murder. As you might guess this is meant both to help inform and as noise to raise the difficulty of Intellience agencies use of the Echelon machine. Information drawn from the followed news reports, which include additional information and links: The Age (Daily Newspaper – Melbourne, Australia) 1 MSN Nine (News Site operated by Microsoft – Australia) 2 3 4 5 6 TechWeb (Technology News Site, USA) 7 Covert Action Quarterly (Journal that monitors Intelligence Agencies – Washington DC, USA) 8 Duncan Campbell (Investigative Jouranlist for the Guardian Newspaper in London, England): 9 MacOS Rumors (Computer Industry Newsite – USA) 10 Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook

Instead of our normal blather, we’ll 'quote' User Friendly: Share with: TwitterRedditEmailLinkedInFacebook