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Wednesday, Jan 16, 2002

manila wafers

there was a report on hotline this morning linking to a spanish newspaper which said three american special ops had been killed in the philippines but by the time i tried to find it it was gone. hotline has erased the link and i havent seen anything else about it although i havent looked very hard yet. this links to a time report on our latest engagement in the philippines.

tax relief

"Kennedy said taxpayers earning less than $130,000 would not be affected by the delayed income tax cuts he proposes and that higher-income people "will still be receiving billions of dollars in new tax breaks" even if Congress enacted his proposal.

"Future additional tax breaks for the wealthy do not deserve a higher priority than strengthening education, or covering prescription drugs under Medicare, or protecting Social Security, or meeting other urgent national priorities," Kennedy said."

unlevining

"WASHINGTON -- An influential senator, dissatisfied with Saudi Arabia's response to the war on terrorism, said the Pentagon should consider shifting U.S. forces from Saudi territory to another Persian Gulf country where they would be more welcome."

tron and on

"Although "Tron" holds historic landmark status as the first film to present a computer-generated, three-dimensional universe in which the action unfolds, it never quite garnered the same degree of critical support as did "Blade Runner," another '80s film that charted a futuristic cultural shift. But "Tron" launched a number of computer games and, most important, unleashed a new visual aesthetic -- one with major techno-whoa! appeal."

down with the king

"L A U D E R H I L L, Fla., Jan. 16 � A plaque intended to honor deep-voiced actor James Earl Jones at this city's Martin Luther King Jr. celebration instead had this extremely incorrect message: "Thank you James Earl Ray for keeping the dream alive."

Tuesday, Jan 15, 2002

night moves

"The foreigner coming to these shores is more impressed at first by our sky-scrapers. They are new to him. He has not done anything of the sort since he built the tower of Babel. The foreigner is shocked by them. In the daylight they are ugly. They are�well, too chimneyfied and too snaggy�like a mouth that needs attention from a dentist; like a cemetery that is all monuments and no gravestones. But at night, seen from the river where they are columns towering against the sky, all sparkling with light, they are fairylike; they are beauty more satisfactory to the soul than anything man has dreamed of since the Arabian nights."

end game

""By mutual consent," writes the family. Attached to a high-profile person, this simple phrase signals a sea change in the matter of double suicides, even as the current administration in Washington struggles to hold back the tide."

andersen's windows

"4. Compassion for over-worked, grunt congressional staffers who will be running the investigation. "

more toys

"Whether all the necessary pieces will ever fall into place is an open debate, but that crucial first step -- technology that lets you search video -- has just been developed and is now being marketed by a United Kingdom-based firm called Dremedia. Founded by Matthew Karas, who previously headed up the interactive TV unit at the BBC, Dremedia has software that combines speech recognition, image analysis, speech-to-text transcription, and the ability to organize so-called unstructured data. In essence, Dremedia's software can analyze video footage -- either raw or edited -- and not only identify nearly every word spoken but also differentiate between speakers and even understand when a scene changes."

about the edges

"UNTIL very recently, ministers would not discuss reforming Britain's hard-line anti-drug policies. No matter that Britain's record was among the worst in Europe in terms of users of hard drugs and deaths from overdoses. To be seen to be tough was a political imperative. But things are changing."

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