This webpage of a 1960s Brazilian pop fan contains scans of dozens of LPs along with downloadable MP3s of selected tracks. They're amazing. Link (Thanks, f2_600!)

Cheney stood out in a sea of black-coated world leaders because he was wearing an olive drab parka with a fur-trimmed hood. It is embroidered with his name. It reminded one of the way in which children's clothes are inscribed with their names before they are sent away to camp. And indeed, the vice president looked like an awkward boy amid the well-dressed adults.

Like other attendees, the vice president was wearing a hat. But it was not a fedora or a Stetson or a fur hat or any kind of hat that one might wear to a memorial service as the representative of one's country. Instead, it was a knit ski cap, embroidered with the words "Staff 2001." It was the kind of hat a conventioneer might find in a goodie bag.

It is also worth mentioning that Cheney was wearing hiking boots -- thick, brown, lace-up ones. Did he think he was going to have to hike the 44 miles from Krakow -- where he had made remarks earlier in the day -- to Auschwitz?

Hayat Benchenaa's hanging alarm clock is a hanging ball suspended over your bed that lights and chimes to wake you up. To hit snooze, you just give it a little smack, causing the alarm to retract on its cord just a little nearer to the ceiling—forcing you to stretch more and more each time until you're eventually swiping at it with a broom, because you have 20-foot loft ceilings. For most people, though, the alarm will retract until it hits the ceiling, where it must be pulled down to its original length to reset.

Someone needs to put this into production—it's brilliant.

Hayat Benchenaa's hanging radio alarm cloc [Core77 via SACM.ZA]

George was at the party in the bathroom with a mirror
Making lines for all the frat-boys all fucked up on German beer
Driving on his way home he saw the red lights flash
The cop gave him a warning said "Say hi to your dad"

Twenty-two years later just across the tracks
Is another boy named George on the corner selling crack
Walking on his way home he saw the red lights spin
The cop pushed him against the car and bashed his head in

Youthful indiscretions
We all make mistakes
We grow and learn life's lessons
Youthful indiscretions

George went on to college continued on way
Still got high and stinking drunk and very average grades
Then he saw a bright light he said that it was God
I think it was father and a fancy job

Now back to our other George who's sitting in a cell
In the company of murderers and rapists bound for Hell
And when I light a big fat joint
I thank the Lord up high
That I was born bleached blonde and white

Youthful Indiscretions
We all make mistakes
We grow and learn life's lessons
Youthful Indiscretions

This company is manufacturing and selling Hiëronymus Bosch action figures! Link (Thanks, Mack!)

Ted Turner called Fox a propaganda tool of the Bush administration and indirectly compared Fox News Channel's popularity to Adolf Hitler's popular election to run Germany before World War II.

Turner made those fiery comments in his first address at the National Association for Television Programming Executives' conference since he was ousted from Time Warner Inc. five years ago.

The 66-year-old billionaire, who leveraged a television station in Atlanta into a media empire, made the comment before a standing-room-only crowd at NATPE's opening session Tuesday.

His no-nonsense, sometimes humorous, approach during the one-hour Q&A generated frequent loud applause and laughter.

Fox wasn't laughing, however. "Ted is understandably bitter having lost his ratings, his network, and now his mind," said a Fox News spokesperson. "We wish him well."

This "self-destruct button" fits in a standard PC tower bay and can be used as a power-key for your PC. Link (via Gizmodo)

During Rice’s nomination debate Tuesday, one of the most outspoken Democrats was Mark Dayton, D-Minn., who described her as a liar and an apologist for Bush administration failures in Iraq.

“I don’t like impugning anyone’s integrity, but I really don’t like being lied to,” he said. “Repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally.”

A new report co-published by the Center for American Progress warns that global warming is quickly approaching the point of no return, after which "widespread agricultural failure, water shortages and major droughts, increased disease, sea-level rise and the death of forests" will become irreversible. The findings were a product of a taskforce co-chaired by Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Stephen Byers, a close confidant of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who called on world leaders "to recognize that climate change is the single most important long-term issue that the planet faces." The task force urges G-8 countries "to agree to generate a quarter of their electricity from renewable sources by 2025 and shift agricultural subsidies from food crops to biofuels."

Yushchenko [...] said today that the European Union strategy must include the prospect of Ukraine's membership.

Yushchenko was in Russia yesterday and is to address the European Parliament in Brussels on 27 January.

In his inaugural address on 23 January, Yushchenko said that his country's place is in the European Union.

The internet's most popular search engine, Google, is testing a service that promises to extend its reach from web pages to television programmes.

Google Video scans through television shows by analysing the subtitles provided for people with hearing difficulties. The company hopes that exploiting this niche service will prove a simple yet effective way to identify the content of a programme automatically.

The gulf between how Americans view themselves and how the world views them was summed up in a poll last week by the BBC. Fully 71 percent of Americans see the United States as a source of good in the world. More than half view Bush's election as positive for global security. Other studies report that 70 percent have faith in their domestic institutions and nearly 80 percent believe "American ideas and customs" should spread globally.

Foreigners take an entirely different view: 58 percent in the BBC poll see Bush's re-election as a threat to world peace. Among America's traditional allies, the figure is strikingly higher: 77 percent in Germany, 64 percent in Britain and 82 percent in Turkey. Among the 1.3 billion members of the Islamic world, public support for the United States is measured in single digits. Only Poland, the Philippines and India viewed Bush's second Inaugural positively.

Two of the city's subway lines - the A and the C - have been crippled and may not return to normal capacity for three to five years after a fire Sunday afternoon in a Lower Manhattan transit control room that was started by a homeless person trying to keep warm, officials said yesterday.

The blaze, at the Chambers Street station used by the A and C lines, was described as doing the worst damage to subway infrastructure since the terrorist attack of Sept. 11, 2001. It gutted a locked room that is no larger than a kitchen but that contains some 600 relays, switches and circuits that transmit vital information about train locations.

The A line will run roughly one-third the normal number of trains - meaning that riders who used to wait six minutes for a train might now have to wait 18 minutes - while the C train will cease to exist as a separate line, at least for the time being. The C will be replaced by the V in Brooklyn. Long waits and erratic service are likely to be the norm on the two lines, which have a combined ridership of 580,000 each weekday.

Riders on the West Side of Manhattan and in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of East New York and Ocean Hill-Brownsville will find the available trains more crowded, and will likely seek alternate subway lines, crowding them as well.

"This is a very significant problem, and it's going to go on for quite a while," said Lawrence G. Reuter, the president of New York City Transit. He estimated it would take "several millions of dollars and several years" to reassemble and test the intricate network of custom-built switch relays that were destroyed in the blaze, which officials believe began when the homeless person - who has not been found - set fire to wood and refuse in a shopping cart in the tunnel about 50 feet north of the Chambers Street station.

Remember the Calvin and Hobbes strips where Calvin made snowmen that appeared to have been hit and cut in half by his dad's car, or eaten by "snow sharks?" A snow-sculptor has created real-life versions of these and posted photos to the Web. Link (via Waxy)

The Bush administration is seeking about $80 billion in new funding for military operations this year in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushing the total for both conflicts to almost $300 billion so far.

Administration and congressional officials said the new request, expected to be announced on Tuesday, would come on top of the $25 billion in emergency spending already approved for this fiscal year.

That means funding for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan will total nearly $105 billion in fiscal 2005 alone -- a record that shatters initial estimates of the cost.

[...]

The funding request comes as the U.S. Army said it is now planning to keep at least 120,000 troops in Iraq for the next two years to train and fight alongside Iraqi forces against insurgents [which now number over 200,000]. The Army total is part of a force of 150,000 American soldiers, Marines and other troops now in Iraq.

The foundation run by Microsoft magnate Bill Gates has announced it is dedicating $750m (£400m) to a worldwide infant vaccination programme.

Mr Gates said the donation would help save millions of children's lives. "Supporting children's immunisation is undoubtedly the best investment we've ever made," he said in a statement. At the same time, it was announced that Norway was donating $290m to the same organisation, the Global Alliance for Vaccination and Immunisation (Gavi).

Mr Gates' pledge is to run over 10 years, and Norway's over five.

[...]

"Gavi will use the funds announced today to support national immunisation programmes in 72 of the world's poorest countries."

The commitment was welcomed by Gavi chairman Dr Jong-wook Lee, who said it would "prevent immense suffering and disability over the coming years". The Gates Foundation said current vaccination efforts were failing to reach an estimated 27 million children in developing countries every year, leading to millions of deaths.

BAGHDAD - Twenty months after Saddam Hussein's government was toppled and its torture chambers unlocked, Iraqis are again being routinely beaten, hung by their wrists and shocked with electrical wires, according to a report by [Human Rights Watch].

Iraqi police, jailers and intelligence agents, many of them holding the same jobs they had under Hussein, are "committing systematic torture and other abuses" of detainees, Human Rights Watch said in a report to be released Tuesday.

Legal safeguards are being ignored, political opponents are targeted for arrest, and the government of interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi "appears to be actively taking part, or is at least complicit, in these grave violations of fundamental human rights," the report concludes.

A spokesman for Allawi declined to comment Monday and said "I will put this report on the prime minister's desk tomorrow to see if he has any reaction."

When President Bush flew to Canada in his first international trip following his reelection, the White House portrayed it as the beginning of a fence-mending tour to bring allies back into the fold after a tense first term. But after Bush left, the Canadians were more furious than before.

They were stunned when Bush leaned across a table in a private meeting and lectured Prime Minister Paul Martin about opposing the U.S. missile defense system. And they were later taken aback by a speech filled with what they considered the same "old Bush" foreign policy pronouncements that opened the divide with the allies in the first place [...]

Bush did confront Martin and used the sort of language that sets Canadians on edge. "He leaned across the table and said, 'I'm not taking this position, but some future president is going to say, 'Why are we paying to defend Canada?' " said the senior Canadian official who was in the room and noted that he had been assured by Rice and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell personally that Bush would avoid the subject.

"Most of our side was trying to explain the politics, how it was difficult to do," the official said. But Bush "waved his hands and said, 'I don't understand this. Are you saying that if you got up and said this is necessary for the defense of Canada it wouldn't be accepted?'"

Embryonic stem cells, hailed as a potential treatment for a range of diseases, are contaminated by an animal molecule, researchers suggest.

The molecule's presence would lead the human immune system to attack the cells.

The University of California team, writing in Nature Medicine, says this means such cells could not be used.

They say the only solution is to create new stem cell lines without using animal-derived products.

The White House is shrugging off a new study that suggests contamination of the existing lines of embryonic stem cells could bar their use in treating disease.

Press Secretary Scott McClellan says the president is satisfied those existing lines are "adequate" for the "basic research that needs to be done."

[Scott] McClellan says Bush knew about the issue in 2001, but agreed with the view of top government scientists that it wouldn't prevent research into potential breakthrough disease cures.

Pew has just released an amazing-looking study on Internet search behavior. Two factoids from the exec summary left my jaw hanging:

Nearly half of searchers use a search engines no more than a few times a week, and two-thirds say they could walk away from search engines without upsetting their lives very much....

Only 38% of users are aware of the distinction between paid or "sponsored" results and unpaid results.

Link

Lots of photos of killer gear.

REP. THOMAS: Well, it was one of my ways of getting people to focus on the issue of age. To move from 65 to 68, which we did in 1983, was a benefit cut. But it also creates hardships based upon the occupation that you have, and it creates inequities on who you are and how long you live. You could just as easily have a discussion about occupations as to when would be a fair or an unfair time to require. We also need to examine, frankly, Tim, the question of race in terms of how many years of retirement do you get based upon your race? And you ought not to just leave gender off the table because that would be a factor.

Does Thomas want the SSA actuaries to dust off the old racial classification systems from the Old South or limpieza de sangre codes from colonial Latin America with their comic and hideous lists of "mulattoes" (one-half) and "quadroons" (one fourth) and even "octoroons" (one-eighth) depending on one's precise mixture of white and black 'blood'?

What about Hispanics and Asians? And will those clean-living Mormons be adequately penalized for living so damn long? Perhaps some folks could lock in early retirement in advance if they signed binding SSA contracts agreeing to smoke and booze it up through their middle-years.

Yes, sure, this is a reductio ad absurdum. But really, it's pretty absurd. And these are the folks who can't brook the concept of affirmative action?

Most of the Iraqi capital - particularly the western districts - has been without water for the past seven days.

Added to a lack of electricity - the national grid is off more than it is on - a crumbling mobile phone network, endless lines to get fuel and a daily dose of bombs and mortars, it has made it next to impossible to even think about the coming election. "This is everyone's biggest problem," according to Alaa al-Din Saad, 32, a father of two who lives in the southwest district of Saidiya. "We haven't had water for nearly a week. We used up all our reserves and now I haven't had a shower for three days."

Iraq's national election, just seven days away and expected to bring its own set of problems amid fears of a surge in violence, has taken a back seat to the need to find a water source in a country that is mostly desert but also has two of the world's major rivers.

"Nothing works - there's no power, no water, no fuel, no phone service. It's a disaster," according to Namidh, a security guard who said his family had been without water for a week.

The dramatic photos of Saturn's moon Titan, taken by Europe's Huygens spacecraft, show drainage channels filled with liquid methane rain.

Scientists said liquid methane, the lightest hydrocarbon gas known, feeds river channels, lakes, streams and springs on Titan's surface, the BBC reported Friday.

"We have evidence of many Earth-like processes (on Titan) such as (rain), erosion and abrasion but with very exotic materials," said Marty Tomasko.

Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will {America's} heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit!

Despite the fact that there was no specific terrorist threat, the security was unprecedented even for these unprecedented times, with FBI snipers on rooftops, clusters of antiaircraft missiles, layers of police and checkpoints, video command centers monitoring every spilled cup of coffee (CNN's Kelli Arena provided an inside peek), and rows of empty bleachers. The commentators noted this clampdown with a sigh of regret, and mentioned the "irony" of President Bush using the words "freedom" and "liberty" dozens of times in his address while the city was under such tight constriction. But this has gone past way irony now into total cognitive dissonant breakdown. Commentators refuse to recognize the ominous import of the stepped-up militarization of the parade and pageantry, and increasingly of civilian life in this country under a president who likes to wear neat little uniforms that say, "Me commander-in-chief."

Media Matters for America inventoried all guests who appeared on FOX News, CNN, and MSNBC during the channels' January 20 inauguration coverage. Between 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET, Republican and conservative guests and commentators outnumbered Democrats and progressives 17 to 6 on FOX, 10 to 1 on CNN (not including a Republican-skewed panel featuring Ohio voters), and 13 to 2 on MSNBC. Moreover, the rare Democrat or progressive guest usually appeared opposite conservatives, whereas most Republican and conservative guests and commentators appeared solo or alongside fellow conservatives.