In a story that touches me on a deep, personal level, Mars, Inc. has announced that it does not support the proposal to redefine the legal definition of Chocolate and will not use any substitute ingredients in its manufacturing.

Thank you, Mars, for standing up for the quality of your product. Although that picture on your website with a package of M&Ms next to a bag of Whiskas is a bit disturbing...

For better or worse, the site is now live on the new CMS. No more double posting so there's no turning back. I'll be porting over the missing pieces in the next few days.

Please let me know if you experience any issues with this new setup. I haven't yet, but I don't actually read this thing... :-)

I'm almost done with the conversion of this site to new software. The stories, comments, polls and other static content items have all been ported over and, in a number of cases, have had links repaired. I did this by hand to make sure it all got where it needed to be correctly and to find the dead links. I actually enjoyed it as it gave me a chance to go back and re-read things that I wrote way back when. I'm quite certain that I am the only one that would get any enjoyment out of reading my old [……]

I've never been very artsy-fartsy. Nor am I a fan of so-called "Urban Art" - you know, those big metallic sculpture things that large cities will have commissioned for the courtyard in front of the main public library or some such place.

They tend to all look like an erector-set-gone-bad project. Sometimes they even have moving parts that creak and grown and make you walk a wide path lest it break off and come crashing down in a very unceremonious fashion.

But now and then, something comes along that is unique enough and quirky enough to really strike my fancy. [……]

Now everything is made in China. Including the weather.

The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. Enough said.

Apparently, Air Supply is the crappy music choice of the Orthodox. This conclusion stems from a discussion between a Moose and myself.

For the past couple of weeks, we've been working in the same room, listening to streaming radio (70s and 80s mostly) and occasionally joking about my long-held and deep-seated hatred of Air Supply. At one point, a Wham! song came on and I mentioned that it was, at the very least, a half step above Air Supply. To my astonishment, he disagreed.

Make no mistake - we were on the same page that both were entirely sucky. The question was [……]

In a much more chilling follow-up to the humorous story about the Disneyland knock-off in China comes this story from the AP about a kid's show on Islamic television.

Raise up a child to blow up busses and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Addition (05/11/2007): In this follow-up article in the Telegraph, Al-Aqsa TV refuses to change its programming. My favorite quote is "We have our own ways to educate our children and any criticism of this approach is shocking interference in our internal affairs." Of course, when they criticize the US for its support [……]

This is just too funny. A Japan Probe article reports about a Disneyland knockoff in China. The funny part is that Disney has nothing to do with it. It's owned by the Chinese government. [Note: The news reports are in Japanese but you can easily get the idea.]

Never mind the fact that they have a mouse with white gloves, large shoes and big ears. They say it's a big-eared cat. And that's another cat in the red polka-dot dress. Hmmmmm.... Where have we seen that dress before? Was it here, perhaps? [……]

OK - well new anyway. After putting it off for far too long, I've finally upgraded the site to the latest version of Geeklog. There are still some kinks to work out, so if you see anything geborken, please let me know.