Some Palin weirdness

[UPDATE 9/18 11:20 AM: The Tech-Ex post is now available but with no explanation for the disruption. Wikileaks is still not loading.]

As I often do during my day, I checked my Google Reader to see what was going on with my favorite blogs. Tech-Ex included an entry with the heading "Hackers Break into Palin's Yahoo! Email."


In case you can't read it, the post says:

Sarah Palin, John McCain's running-mate, has come under fire for using her private Yahoo! email address for state business. The reason? As a public official she's supposed to use her official email address (which is, of course, subject to laws requiring the retention of government records). She even has a Blackberry, so why would she even need to use Yahoo! mail?

At any rate, the hacker group Anonymous, famous for taking on the Church of Scientology, said Wednesday it had hacked into a second Palin Yahoo! account, and shipped off screenshots and emails to Wikileaks, the web site started with the intention of allowing whistleblowers to anonymously release government and corporate documents, "an uncensorable version of Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis. "

Sounds like a good place to send them, if in fact Palin was hiding anything.

Here’s the announcement from Wikileaks (someone seems to be firing back at Wikileaks as it is unreachable at the time of this writing).

Circa midnight Tuesday the 16th of September (EST) Wikileaks’ sources loosely affiliated with the activist group ‘anonymous’ gained access to U.S. Republican Party Vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email account gov.palin@yahoo.com. Governor Palin has come under criticism for using private email accounts to avoid government transparency mechanisms. The zip archive made available by Wikileaks contains screen shots of Palin’s inbox, example emails, address book and two family photos. The list of correspondence, together with the account name, appears to re-enforce the criticism.

That was enough to send me to Tech-Ex and read more.



Strange. The page is missing, but was yet to be deleted from Google Reader. I decided to click on the link within the Google Reader entry for the Wikileaks info.



Similar to as reported in the Tech-Ex entry, Wikileaks is still unresponsive. I got the same results after attempting to reload the page several times. I also go the same results when I tried to load the main Wikileaks page.

I'm not saying she nor the Republican Party had anything to do with this, but what the hell?

And for those who can't read the final bit of small type at the end of the first image, here's what else Tech-Ex had to say:

While, of course, it would be easy to fake an email address like this, the quantity of emails, the contacts list, and the fact that Wired got a response confirming at least one email leads me to believe it's not a fake.

Amy McCorkell, whom Palin appointed to the Governor’s Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse in 2007, confirmed to Wired that one of the emails was legitimate.

The e-mail, a message of support to Palin, tells her not to let negative press get to her and asks Palin to pray for McCorkell, who writes that "I need strength to 1. keep employment, 2. not have to choose."

Be sure to check out the Wired article while you still can!

How to Get Published and Avoid Alien Bloodsuckers

Lore Sjöberg in his excellent Alt Text blog offers up some helpful advice to new writers in the internet age.

Scammers can smell fear, and to them it smells like the still-living flesh strips that make up most of their diet. A lot of aspiring writers see publishers and agents as bored nobility, offering contracts in a whimsical attempt to inject some entertainment into an otherwise tedious existence. They suspect that even putting too long a delay between "yes" and "please" will cause the contract to be withdrawn and fed to a purebred Saluki.

Now, even if the editor initially appears to be a mammal, it's still possible to get scammed. There's a wonderful rule of thumb known as Yog's Law: "Money flows toward the writer."

I know that in a world filled with kickbacks and graft, this seems too good to be true. It seems perfectly logical that you might have to spread around some cash, grease some palms and lubricate the chassis of commerce with some crude currency in order to make publishing run smoothly. Scammers leap on this misapprehension like a cat on cantaloupe.

A cat on cantaloupe?

Unlikely Movie Scientists (WIRED MAGAZINE: ISSUE 15.10)

We've actually discussed this topic at several of our meetings and I know we all agree on number one!







Denise Richards, The World Is Not Enough (1999)
Her character's name is bad enough: Jones, Christmas Jones. But it requires a quantum leap in logic to buy the scantily clad, blank-faced Richards as a nuclear physicist.

Check out the rest of the list!

Very Short Stories

From Wired:

We'll be brief: Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn.") and is said to have called it his best work. So we asked sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers from the realms of books, TV, movies, and games to take a shot themselves.

Dozens of our favorite auteurs put their words to paper, and five master graphic designers took them to the drawing board. Sure, Arthur C. Clarke refused to trim his ("God said, 'Cancel Program GENESIS.' The universe ceased to exist."), but the rest are concise masterpieces.


I'm not going to reprint all of them, just a selection that pertain or will have interest to our group.

• Failed SAT. Lost scholarship. Invented rocket. - William Shatner

• Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so. - Joss Whedon

• Automobile warranty expires. So does engine. - Stan Lee

• Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time. - Alan Moore

• From torched skyscrapers, men grew wings. - Gregory Maguire
  

• With bloody hands, I say good-bye. - Frank Miller
  

• It cost too much, staying human. - Bruce Sterling
  

• 1940: Young Hitler! Such a cantor! - Michael Moorcock
  

• I’m dead. I’ve missed you. Kiss … ? - Neil Gaiman

• Easy. Just touch the match to - Ursula K. Le Guin
  

• Bush told the truth. Hell froze. - William Gibson
  

And a Dark Forces Special:

• We crossed the border; they killed us. - Howard Waldrop

• H-bombs dropped; we all died. - Howard Waldrop

• Your house is mine: soft revolution. - Howard Waldrop

• Warskiing; log; prop in face. - Howard Waldrop

• The Axis in WWII: haiku! Gesundheit. - Howard Waldrop

• Salinger story: three koans in fountain. - Howard Waldrop

• Rained, rained, rained, and never stopped. - Howard Waldrop