...more recent posts
Bush keeps Saddam's handgun mounted like a trophy at the White House. The soldiers who captured Saddie the Baddie had it mounted and gave it to Junior as a gift. [via daily kos]
Some familiar names here: Diversion Media - "Charting the startup process for a new media company."
rip senior member of the chicago seven dave dellinger
I thought Gore's speech was good. (Has this been posted? I feel like it has, but I can't find it.)
first this, now this
but thats ok it will all fade into pay-per-view memory anyway (or not) unless moody keeps copies. buried pretty deep too
Is it cheaper to run a generator for your electrical power needs or pay for the power company for the same amount of kilowatt hours?
Abu Rhubarb? WTF? If the dude can't even pronunciatify the name of the prison, what are the odds that he has any understanding of the issues surrouding ah-BOO grehhb?
More front page NY Times online
NEWS ALERT The United States will demolish Abu Ghraib prison in consultation with a new Iraqi government, the White House said on Monday. (6:38 PM ET)The little spinners at work. My first thought: so they can hide physical evidence from future International Tribunals.
NY Times online cover story of the moment:
N.Y. Police Chief RisesDid you know we were on the front lines here? I didn't. Can we stop?
At a time when New York is on the front lines in the worldwide battle with terror, Raymond W. Kelly is emerging as the city's top general.
lockhart steeles curbed launches.
This post on Barbara Bush's beautiful mind has been completely rewritten. D'oh.
this last nights episode of the simpsons (the season finale no. 335) took a broad shot at the republicans. mr burns bought up all the media outlets in town (to controll his image) except for lisas popular independent small press. next everyone opened their own small presses a thinly veiled reference to blogging.
"There's been a lot of talk recently about the exact definition of "torture." Some say it's an accurate descriptor of what happened to Iraqi detainees in U.S. custody. Others say those detainees were not tortured, but simply "abused," and that "torture" is something out of Saddam's dungeons. In a Newsday op-ed this week, linguist Geoffrey Nunberg mused over the invocation of the word "torture". He joins Bob to discuss the political uses and abuses of language, and his new book, Going Nucular: Language, Politics and Culture in Confrontational Times."
i didnt want to crap up sally's post with this post since it was not specific to cycleists but there are a few people recording roadside memorials. at the top of the list is roadsidememorial.org
look under the hoodie
east river music project
At least they apologize for any inconvenience
JAMES LOUIS
Account #: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-1238
Address changes can no longer be performed online
Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed the USA PATRIOT Act. The purpose of the Patriot Act is to help the government fight the funding of terrorism and money laundering activities. The Federal government is relying on all financial institutions to take reasonable steps to know the true identity of every customer who wishes to open an account. There are individuals that use banking relationships to finance terrorism and other criminal activity. The effort to identify and verify our customers is one way to further prevent, detect and prosecute international money laundering and terrorist financing.
As part of this effort, Federal law now requires that all financial institutions maintain a physical street address on file for customers. Therefore, address changes can no longer be performed online. To change your address, please call 1-800-xxx-xxxx to speak with a Customer Relations associate.
(Major Credit Card) respects your privacy and maintains its commitment to protecting your personal information. We apologize for any inconvenience.
(no link--too lazy) House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco offered her strongest condemnation yet of President Bush on Wednesday, assailing him as incompetent and declaring that the only way for the United States to triumph in Iraq is to replace him as commander in chief.
Triumph? How about "get the fuck out?"
he'll never make another invalid assumption. (why is all my news two days old today?)
I am a bit embarrassed at being so surprised by this chart showing where U.S. oil comes from.
So this Firefox browser works great and since Microsoft Word seemed like maybe its been removed from this machine I downloaded a free word processor called Abidword and it works pretty well and earlier I got the notion to spend twenty bucks to get a year of dictionary.coms deluxe version because I find the out loud pronounciation key a nice feature. I have a dictionary software that does it but it's all the way down at my house, which is still occupied for awhile longer by my hippie replacement, and anyway a web based out loud pronounciation key is something a person who believes in good clean fun should have. This little Vaio laptop keyboard is ok, easier to type than I would have thought, in case you're wondering when I'm going to wrap up, I'm just practicing so....
IRR being called up. Drum and Kos have threads.
Is it not bad enough that we have to endure the Repulican National Convention (103 days and counting)?
New Yorkers beware, now maybe the Olympics too:
New York City joined four European capitals — Paris, London, Madrid and Moscow — as the five cities unanimously selected today to advance to the final bidding round for the 2012 Olympic Summer Games.
the gray zone
Profile of Brown University's semiotics program: "How an obscure Brown concentration trained graduates to crack the codes of American culture -- and infiltrated the mainstream."
Rumor has it that the success of HBO's Deadwood has led to a greenlight for an even more obscene and depraved series about another patch of land utterly beyond the reach of the law -- Gitmo.
Sunday May 16th at 8:00 PM, Channel 13 airs Pale Male, the movie about the famous Fifth Avenue Red-tailed Hawk.
On the subject of whether Nick Berg was a you-know-what for the you-know-what or the you-know-what, here's an interesting tidbit:
Meanwhile, the family said Berg had been questioned by the FBI more than a year ago about a contact he had with a terrorism suspect in 1999, while he was a student at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.Maybe working und3rc0ver in the US at that time?A senior law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the terror suspect appears to have been acquainted with Zacarias Moussaoui, an al-Qaida adherent now in federal custody and awaiting trial on conspiracy charges stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks.
The official said an e-mail address traced to Berg had been used by the unidentified individual with purported terror connections, but a 2002 investigation showed Berg had never met the individual and had not given the e-mail address to that person.
Michael Berg told reporters Thursday that his son was cleared of any wrongdoing. He said Nicholas Berg met the suspect while riding the bus to classes, and had allowed the suspect to use his computer.
Very bad news in Najaf:
Four holes, about 12 inches (30 centimeters) by eight, are visible on the [Imam Ali] shrine's dome, AP cited one of reporters as saying. They appeared to have been caused by machinegun fire, it said.I would not be surprised if Bush had never heard of this shrine.
The Rites of Spring (click on rites of spring procession) pageant creates and presents 8 hours of performance, dance, music, art, and poetry throughout the network of Lower East Side gardens. The spectacular day-long pilgrimmage features giant puppets, mobile sculptures, ceremonial art objects, costumed garden characters, and Brazilian, African, and Dominican bands, weaving throughout the neighborhood to visit the network of gardens. The diverse cultural traditions and history of the neighborhood gardens are honored with collaborative presentations by the gardeners and artists at each garden site.
Throughout the day a mythic drama is enacted, in which Gaia(who represetns the gardens) is born, married, kidnapped, and then saved at the end of the day. The closing ceremony at the Green Oasis Garden celebrates the victory of the community and the preservation of the gardens with music, poetry and the release of 50 live butterflies for the protection of the gardens.
"but I was wrong" "I'm a little slow" "...I assumed"
Democratic challenger John Kerry said on Wednesday his first choice as defense secretary would be Republican Sen. John McCain.
Setting aside my personal opinions of these two men, which obviously don't mean much, I think this is a brilliant move by Kerry (in terms of winning the election.)
Beautiful aerial photo of a single cab driving through a snowed in Brooklyn. More aerial NYC shots here. (via kottke)
"No dates, no numbers, no money. This is a nonprofit organization."
It's funny, I saw this man yesterday and was wondering what was going on. Yet another question answered...
Good reminiscence by Tony Hendra, via cursor.org, about the rise and fall of the National Lampoon.
I thought you low-fi animated gif-ers might find this amusing: an overlay to pixelate your television.
Japanese costume catalogue
via mister pants
Maybe it's time to consider a new and exciting career "under minimal supervision."
gratuitous use of the term "blog" for a rooftop gardening story.
I like Safari a lot and I am loving OSX (I waited a long time...the upgrade from OS 8.6 is gratifying to say the least). But here's one thing that's buggin me -- these simulated shadows behind the windows. Who decided we need tromp l'oeil in order to get around the computer?
-28C in the Bay of Fundi. Pictures from the Coast Guard ship Sir william Alexander.
LiTraCon: light transmitting concrete. Check this picture.
Regarding the prisoner abuse in Iraq, it is funny that it’s being spun as a mirror image of the ongoing insurgency: “just a few bad apples”, but even army-adorationist Ralph Peters understands that it’s disastrous. Wasn’t it just last week Dave posted that foreign policy review mentioning the symbolic blindness of using a hated prison for essentially the same purpose it had under Saddam? “Meet the new boss: same as the old boss.”
Still, while I’d like to see the Geneva Convention as humane and progressive, there’s a sense in which it’s just a way of legitimating war. One of the great American myths I heard as a child was about how the clever colonial revolutionaries defeated the effete British who were so stupid that they just marched up in well-ordered lines presenting our crafty (guerrilla) sharpshooters with easy targets. In fact, the Brits were practicing “civilized” and “honorable” war as it had been developed in Europe over centuries, ameliorating the martial chaos of the Dark Ages, and they thought that the colonists weren’t playing fair or going by the “rules of war.” (In keeping with the May Day theme, it may be noted that to the Europeans it was evident that the colonials had lost touch with the cultural values of their motherland, having been made wild by living in a wild country.) But what’s with the notion of “we’re going to kill you, but we’ll be polite about it”? When push comes to shove (comes to shoot) this stuff always goes out the window, and there’s a certain level of hypocrisy in pretending otherwise. Being nice about killing is not to be decried, but it’s just a small step on an old road; what we need is a quantum leap. War crimes is a redundancy.
bugmenot.com - registration bypass collective
lately i get so bombarded with pop ups while i'm online. it's annoying to the point that i'm not using the web as much as i normally would. it seems like its gotten way out of control in the last month or so. is anyone else noticing this?