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This clbuttic was originally posted by “ezrec”…

Browsing through a web archive of some old computer club conversations, I ran across this sentence:

“Apple made the clbuttic mistake of forcing out their visionary – I mean, look at what NeXT has been up to!”

Hmm. “clbuttic”.

Google “clbuttic” – thousands of hits!

There’s someone who call his car ‘clbuttic’.

There are “Clbuttic Steam Engine” message boards.

Webster’s dictionary – no help.

Hmm. What can this be?

HINT: People who make buttumptions about their regex scripts, will be embarbutted when they repeat this mbuttive mistake.

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“Onthoud dat het downloaden van muziek en films vanaf het internet meestal illegaal is, tenzij je gebruikmaakt van een legale site.” Met die vermaning slaat een folder van voorlichtingscampagne Digibewust de plank mis.

De waarschuwing staat in het ‘Gezinsboekje bedwing het web!‘ (PDF), een voorlichtingsfolder voor kinderen en hun ouders over de gevaren van internet.

De bewering dat downloaden ‘meestal illegaal’ is, is echter in strijd met de Nederlandse wetgeving. Die staat alleen het zonder toestemming uploaden van auteursrechtelijk beschermd materiaal niet toe. Downloaden is, zolang dat voor niet-commercieel eigen gebruik gebeurt, wel degelijk legaal.

Volgens woordvoerster Inge Aarts van Digibewust, een samenwerkingsverband van de overheid en het bedrijfsleven, is de “zeer geslaagde” folder “een Europees product”, waarvan geen op lidstaten toegespitste versies zijn gemaakt. In de meeste EU-landen is downloaden niet toegestaan. Aarts kan niet zeggen waarom de gewraakte zin niet uit de folder kan worden geschrapt.

Laat me raden – omdat ander de “gift” van de muziek industrie voor het maken van de folder teruggestort moet worden?

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It is said that no other generation before has been as anxious and risk aware as ours. Other than animals, we aren’t equipped for the challenges of contemporary living. We don’t have the abilities to identify the real dangers in a surplus of potential threats and horror scenarios offered to us by mass media. We don’t have the right instincts to tell threat from panicmongering.

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What made Dr. K memorable was a gimmick he employed that began with his introduction at the beginning of his first class:

“Now I know some of you have already heard of me, but for the benefit of those who are unfamiliar, let me explain how I teach. Between today until the class right before finals, it is my intention to work into each of my lectures … one lie. Your job, as students, among other things, is to try and catch me in the Lie of the Day.” And thus began our ten-week course.

This was an insidiously brilliant technique to focus our attention – by offering an open invitation for students to challenge his statements, he transmitted lessons that lasted far beyond the immediate subject matter and taught us to constantly checksum new statements and claims with what we already accept as fact. Early in the quarter, the Lie of the Day was usually obvious – immediately triggering a forest of raised hands to challenge the falsehood. Dr. K would smile, draw a line through that section of the board, and utter his trademark phrase “Very good! In fact, the opposite is true. Moving on … ”

As the quarter progressed, the Lie of the Day became more subtle, and many ended up slipping past a majority of the students unnoticed until a particularly alert person stopped the lecture to flag the disinformation. Every once in a while, a lecture would end with nobody catching the lie which created its own unique classroom experience – in any other college lecture, end of the class hour prompts a swift rush of feet and zipping up of bookbags as students make a beeline for the door; on the days when nobody caught the lie, we all sat in silence, looking at each other as Dr. K, looking quite pleased with himself, said with a sly grin: “Ah ha! Each of you has one falsehood in your lecture notes. Discuss amongst yourselves what it might be, and I will tell you next Monday. That is all.” Those lectures forced us to puzzle things out, work out various angles in study groups so we could approach him with our theories the following week.

Brilliant … but what made Dr. K’s technique most insidiously evil and genius was, during the most technically difficult lecture of the entire quarter, there was no lie.

“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”

– H.L. Mencken

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Congress certainly has its share of crooks, but Members of the European Parliament make American lawmakers look like amateurs when it comes to pilfering tax monies for private gain. The U.K.-based Sun reports on the latest scandal:

Crooked MEPs are trousering cash meant for workers’ wages, it was revealed yesterday. Some hire “ghost” staff — then claim thousands of pounds from the £100million annual allowance. Others recycle the handout by employing unqualified relatives, a bombshell report on MEPs’ expenses found. In many cases the whole £125,000 allowance is paid to just one person on the staff. One assistant received a “Christmas bonus” worth 19 times their monthly salary. Taxpayers’ money is also being diverted to party funds, with the internal probe describing the corruption as “massive and widespread”.

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In June 2007, the Discovery Channel bought the rights to broadcast Taxi to the Dark Side. However, in February 2008, they made public their intention never to broadcast the documentary due to its controversial nature.HBO then bought rights to the film and announced that it would be broadcast in September 2008, after which the Discovery Channel announced it would broadcast Taxi to the Dark Side in 2009. Many left-wing pundits and bloggers derided the decision, claiming that the Discovery Channel didn’t want to risk Gibney criticizing the network at the Academy Awards should his movie win the Best Documentary Oscar, and also pointed out that the Discovery Channel’s projected 2009 broadcast date would occur after President George W. Bush left office.

Well, Guess what happened…

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