Hate telemarketers? Then put yo' bad self on the "Do Not Call" List Registry from the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation. Hey, it's the law! And just in case you don't entirely trust the new Romney administration to vigorously enforce the Mass. Do Not Call Act, or the Bush administration to enforce the Federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act, you can also try the Direct Marketing Association, which offers links that (claim to) enable you to get your name off of telemarkers', direct mailers', and email spammers' lists nationwide. They charge $5 for this service, so if it doesn't work, sue the bastards!

Act quickly, citizens! Don't let this happen to you:

Dear Mr. Burket,

Our sources in the Total Information Awareness Bureau have indicated that you have failed to complete your mandatory federal patriot registration form. Failure to do so by the end of this fiscal year could result in the cancellation of your unpatriotic weblog. So pay attention, homelander, and submit your form at: www.homelanddrifter.com. Thank you for your anticipated cooperation.

- Mikita Global Services (for the committe on homeland security registration, documentation, and communication)

greenpeace.org: Dow fights for its image, but not the victims in Bhopal.
Dow responds to a parody website by threatening Verio, which caves and threatens to evict thing.net from the web. For the story and links, see theyesmen.org/dow/.
See also greenpeace.org: Dow sues penniless Bhopal survivors.

sciencenews.org: "Drama in Numbers -- Putting a passion for mathematics on stage", including the new musical "Fermat's Last Tango".

Put Some Coal in Tom Delay's Stocking. And check out the Unemployment Help section at the AFL-CIO website.

9/11 – Who Knew? Ask Senator Bob Graham:

I was surprised at the evidence that there were foreign governments involved in facilitating the activities of at least some of the terrorists in the United States.
[...]
I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing – although that was part of it – by a sovereign foreign government and that we have been derelict in our duty to track that down.
[...]
It will become public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now.

Now that's a neural net! See also Robo-rats and Rat-bots

Create your own Nigerian scam spam with Nigerian Spam-Libs!

To all of you who didn't bother to vote in November, a word from our sponsor.

From email from The Nation:

Tomorrow [Dec. 10] marks the launch of a campaign of nationally coordinated civil disobedience called the Iraq Pledge of Resistance. More than 5,000 people coast to coast have already taken the pledge to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience in order to prevent or halt the death and destruction that US military action will likely bring to the people of Iraq.

From When bugs sing:

By applying auditory display techniques to computer programming we have attempted to give the bugs that live in software programs their own songs. We have developed the CAITLIN musical program auralisation system (Vickers and Alty, 2002b) to allow structured musical mappings to be made of the constructs in Pascal programs. Initial experimental evaluation [Interacting with Computers (2002a,b)] showed that subjects could interpret the musical motifs used to represent the various Pascal language constructs.

For audio samples, see CAITLIN: Implementation of a Musical Program Auralisation System to Study the Effects on Debugging Tasks as Performed by Novice Pascal Programmers. My favorite is track 35, titled "Program A2 Normal".

CNN.com: 'Burning Bush' comment draws prison term: [Richard Humphreys of Portland, Oregon] who made a remark about a "burning Bush" during the president's March 2001 trip to Sioux Falls was sentenced Friday to 37 months in prison.

See also rapidcityjournal.com: Man who threatened Bush says [South Dakota] may be in trouble, for the sort of metaphysical legal arguments that might appeal to John Ashcroft.

DRCNet: New Jersey Weedman [Ed Forchion] Still Jailed for Thought Crime

CBC News: Canadians go to Baghdad as 'human shields'

From eff.org: Teenager Prosecuted for Watching His DVDs on Linux Computer:

Oslo, Norway - The criminal trial against Jon Johansen, a Norwegian teenager who watched his DVDs on his Linux computer using a DVD descrambling program called DeCSS, will start in Norway this Monday, December 9. The trial is scheduled to last until Friday, December 13.

eff.org: Urge Senator Orrin Hatch (likely to be the next Chair of the Judiciary Committee) to hold public hearings on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Total Information Awareness (TIA) program.

From rootingoutevil.org:

Join us in challenging rogue states run by military fanatics who produce and conceal weapons of mass destruction.

Rooting Out Evil is sending a weapons inspection team to the United States to inspect the chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons produced and concealed by the Bush regime.

And we want you to join us - in person or in spirit.