"It was a very good day and went very smoothly. There were a lot less casualties than normal. It is a good part of the local heritage and a tradition we would like to keep going."

And so ground zero remains a pit, a hole, a void. As The New York Post has noticed, more time has passed since George Pataki first unveiled the "final design" of the Freedom Tower than it took to build the Empire State Building. For New Yorkers this saga is a raucous political narrative whose cast of characters includes a rapacious real-estate developer, a seriously irritating architect with even more irritating designer eyeglasses, a governor with self-delusional presidential ambitions and a mayor obsessed with bringing New York the only target that may rival the Freedom Tower as terrorist bait, the Olympics.

But there is another, national narrative here, too. Bothered as New Yorkers may be by what Charles Schumer has termed the "culture of inertia" surrounding ground zero, that stagnation may accurately reflect most of America's view about the war on terror that began with the slaughter of more than 2,700 at the World Trade Center almost four years ago. Though the vacant site is a poor memorial for those who died there, it's an all too apt symbol for a war on which the country is turning its back.

Wider Angle exists to promote cultural, intellectual, and musical diversity and creativity. Our Podcast is an extension of this ideal and features music from independent artists. We promote these artists so our readers and listeners can hear them outside the mainstream, commercial, stifling radio market that blankets not only America, but the world. Wider Angle attempts to spread brilliance and inspiration to the netizens of the world. Short of that, we hope to inspire brilliant people to make the world better.

An Australian tourist was sentenced to 20 years in jail yesterday for attempting to smuggle more than 4kg (9lb) of marijuana into the Indonesian holiday island of Bali, concluding a trial that has gripped her country.

[...]

Her plight has galvanised Australia into an unprecedented outpouring of public sympathy for an alleged drug smuggler after defence lawyers claimed she was an unwitting victim of gangs who employ airport baggage handlers to stuff drugs into luggage.

It had been maintained that the drugs found in her unlocked surfboard bag were planted. The claim appeared to gain weight when it emerged that baggage handlers at Sydney airport had been involved in a drug smuggling ring that had been operating the day Corby flew to Indonesia.

Scores of people flocked to her defence after learning she faced the death penalty.

A former mobile phone businessman, Ron Bakir, agreed to finance her defence, several websites were set up to campaign for her freedom, a lawyer regularly flew to Bali to help and the case has dominated radio chat shows.

The vast majority of callers have been Corby supporters. One newspaper survey said 90% of Australians thought she was innocent. They included the film star Russell Crowe, who said the government should be doing more to secure Corby's release.

Asked if the Iraqi insurgency was getting more difficult to defeat militarily, Bush answered with a classic Dubya-ism.

"No, I don't think so," he said, "I think they're being defeated. And that's why they continue to fight."

It's the sort of answer that makes you pause and scratch your head for just long enough to give him a chance to change the subject.

Listening to Voinovich's desperately cracking voice was utterly heartbreaking. And so was this line, written by Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Sabrina Eaton after the close of the senator's speech: "With that, Voinovich returned to his seat and fidgeted with a yellow highlighting pen until he regained his composure."

Anyone who has ever cried at work knows exactly what that moment felt like, trying so hard to fight back tears that it only makes you cry more. It is the loneliest feeling in the world.

I think we heard the Bush administration in full voice this week, laughing at those who ask questions, wringing tears from those who would dare dissent.

If it were a Broadway show, you could buy a ticket, watch the show and then walk out into the open air. But this is our real life, and there are not even fire exits.

"Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me," he said.

The financing for Shadow's successor won't be trivial. Preserving the cells, a necessary beginning for anyone interested in creating a clone, can run $300 to $1,400, not including veterinarian costs and yearly storage fees. But these expenses pale in comparison with the cost of the clone itself: at Genetic Savings and Clone, the company that stored Shadow's DNA, the price is $32,000 - reduced from the original $50,000, but still an impressive sum.

Mr. Cheng said that he would pay whatever it cost - although he is waiting until the price drops a bit - because he misses his cat so. "Shadow had two really long, funny-looking teeth like sabers," he said. "Everyone loved him."

Yuri Slezkine, author of The Jewish Century -- Don't get me wrong, I liked the book. But it contains an embarrassing misreading of Marx's "On the Jewish Question" that just smacks of sloppy research. Mr. Slezkine, you will be respectfully slapped by me, Burt Reynolds.

"After I changed the startup sound (which required much persuasion and working around the system) the ROM engineers continued changing it with each new machine. Some of them were weak, such as the Stanley Jordon guitar strum used on the first PowerMacs. I objected to it, because that sound had no "power". The engineer wasn't a recording engineer, and not familiar enough with audio. The sound was hallow and without depth. When Steve Jobs returned in 1997, I heard he wanted only one sound for all Macs. He wanted the "good one" which was the one I created. At least that's how I heard the story, and I was still working there at the time."

Sihamoni was quoted before the fight stating that he felt since his fighters out-numbered the lion 42 to 1, that they “… could out-wit and out-muscle [it].”

Activism alert:
Tell Congress to Oppose the "Snitch" Bill [Drug Policy Alliance Network]

Drug war extremists in Congress want to throw you in prison for two years if you fail to turn your neighbor in for committing a non-violent drug offense. They also want to create mandatory minimum sentences for EVERY federal offense. E-mail Congress right now.

Fight For Truth [Drug Policy Alliance Network]

Martinibomb "The Love God" [Comfort Stand]

Kraft Rules [AMERICAblog]
So Does Senfronia Thompson [AMERICAblog]

13 & God "Men of Station" [Anticon]

Crazy Crazy Religious Freaks [Harpers]
Don't Be "Spooky" Or "Weird" with Barbara Walters [Romenesko]
The Good Word [Denver Westword]

Tremoflex9000 "Dream" [GarageBand]

Sixfinger [BoingBoing]
Phallic Logo Awards [B3TA]

Jack White and Beck "Ninety-Nine" [You Aint No Picasso]

Voinivich Rules Like Kraft, Bitches! [The Rachel Maddow Show]

Ivy "Four In the Morning (Royal Sapien Remix)" [CDR]

Generation Shuffle? Oh god, I feel sick. [Gawker]
Sundance Cinemas [unmediated]
Brad Cohen Launches BitTorrent Search [unmediated]

Jonathan Coulton "First of May" [GarageBand]

Gannet Newspapers Get Worse! But How? [Gawker]
Domino Setup in Half-Life (video!) [BoingBoing]
An Open Letter to the Totally Impractical Size Chart for Women's Clothing [McSweeny's]

Imogen Heap "Hide and Seek" [Gorilla vs. Bear]

Wider Angle Podcast #004 [May 26, 2005]
The best of the web shot into your earholes.

Music and news with a blast of the spiceweasel. BAM!

Activism alert:
MoveOnPAC's Emergency Petition to Save the Courts
Hands Off Public Broadcasting from Media Matters

Nancy Sinatra "Bang Bang" [Gorilla vs. Bear]

Google Hires Bush Appointee as VP [AMERICAblog]

Audio Bullys "Shot Me Down" [Antville]

Scott McClellan Disingenuous? [Think Progress]
Sen. Bill Frist Ignores Reality [Think Progress]

Syd "Back Home" [GarageBand]

Verizon Tech Support Not Supportive [Gizmodo]
iMuffs [Eyebeam]
LexisNexis Hackers Reveal Intentions [Wired News]
foo_pod [Hydrogen Audio]

Royal Sapien "Blips" [Olaris Records]

The Self-Deception of Bill O'Reilly [Wonkette]
Google and Yahoo! Ad Revenue to Surpass Broadcast Networks [Lost Remote]
NY Press On The Decline? [Gawker]
Funniest Weather Promo Ever. [Lost Remote]

mr Epic "Down Low" [Magnatune]

Chihuly at Kew [Protein OS]
Graffiti Analysis Projections [Eyebeam]

Exit the Ordinary "Grey Lines" [GarageBand]
Rachel Starr "Till There Was You (Royal Sapien Remix)" [CDR]

Music Critic Demands Portable Music [BoingBoing]
Hong Kong Disney Serves Shark Soup [BoingBoing]
Romance Novel Cover Remixes [BoingBoing]

The Silent Years "Make Up" [GarageBand]

Amazon.com feeds out a lot of product images, putting out the same book cover (say) in a variety of sizes and formats. By experimentation, I found that they don't actually have all the sizes and formats stored. Instead, they have a system that generates each requested image. The details of size and format are built into the image's URL. What that means that, if you want, you can create URLs that generate odd and unlikely Amazon images (you can see my gallery of images here). The proper combination of product choice and added elements and effects could create an interesting visual. What you see here is my best understanding of things based on trial and error; I have no inside info.

The Cell Processor
This is a 9 core processor, one of these cores is something similar to a PowerPC G5 and acts as a controller. The remaining 8 cores are called APUs and these are very high performance vector processors. Each APU contains it's own block of high speed RAM and is capable of 32 GigaFlops (32bit). The APUs are independent processors and can act alone or can be set up to process a stream of data with different APUs working on different stages. This ability to act as a "stream processor" gives access to the full processing power of a Cell which is more than 10 times higher than even the fastest desktop processors.

In addition to the raw processing power the Cell includes a high performance multi-channel memory subsystem and a number of high speed interconnects for connecting to other Cells or I/O devices.

Distributing Processing
Cells are specifically designed to work together. While they can be directly connected via the high speed interconnects they can also be connected in other ways or distributed over a network. The Cells are not gaming or computer specific, they can be in anything from PDAs to TVs and all can be used to effectively act as a single system. The infrastructure for this is built into each Cell as they operate on "Software Cells" which contain routing information as well as programs and data.

Parallel programming is usually complex but in this case the OS will look at the resources it has and distribute tasks accordingly, this process does not involve re-programming. If you want more processing power you simply add more Cells, you do not need to replace the existing ones as the new Cells will augment the existing ones.

Overall the Cell architecture is an architecture for distributed, parallel processing using very powerful computational engines developed using a highly aggressive design strategy. These devices shall be produced in vast numbers so they will provide vast processing resources at a low cost.

Wider Angle Podcast #003 [May 25, 2005]
The best of the web shot into your earholes.

Annointed with canola oil and afraid of calico cats. Just like Donald.


Raging Family "Ink A Dink A Doo" [Hype Machine]

Free your music from iPod tyranny [Wired News]
Use your iPod with Winamp! (Sorry Mac users, you're stuck with iTunes)

Eddie Kendricks "Keep On Truckin (DJ Spinna Remix)" [Hype Machine]

Police using projectors to solve crime [BoingBoing]
Stupid Stupid Star Wars fans make light sabers. Stupid. [BoingBoing]
Publishing: More Titles, Fewer Sales [BoingBoing]

Via Audio "Developing Active People" [GarageBand]

Guess-the-Google [Eyebeam]
Wikitrivia [Eyebeam]

Rilo Kiley "It's A Hit (Live)" [HypeMachine]

Lizz Winstead Sues Air America Radio [New York Post]
New York Press publisher resigns [Gawker]

Peter Adams "Cementalisque" [GarageBand]

Ibiza club Eden to tour US [Resident Advisor]
Lenny Kravitz' loft in SoHo on market since 1903 [Gawker]

Mark Schwaber "Ghosting" [GarageBand]

Google Video Upload
Google Pig Latin (Ooglegay?)

Mason Proper "Life's Cornucopia" [GarageBand]

Method Design [Design Observer]

Behavior "Anywhere But Here" [GarageBand]

Mary Letourneau and Vili Fualaau. Jennifer Wilbanks and John Mason. Rick and Karen Santorum. Their marriages, present and/or future, are in jeopardy...

New York Times: "When I asked [Rick Santorum] if he viewed gay marriage as a threat to his own marriage, he answered quickly. 'Yes, absolutely,' he said. 'It threatens my marriage. It threatens all marriages.'"

It sounds like overblown rhetoric, but think about it. Already, most straight men don't like to hold hands with other men, because it's considered a gay thing. Same with owning small fussy dogs, or throwing Oscars parties, or trolling the Internet for Brazilian tranny-porn. Even soliciting young men in chatrooms for anonymous gay sex is now considered gay -- especially, in a particularly galling double standard, if you're a Republican politician. So make no mistake about it. There's no such thing as "a little gay marriage." Once marriage goes gay, it's gonna be gayer than a tea party at Elton John's house. Same with divorce. In fact, straight marriage is probably already doomed, but thanks for taking a stand, Rick.

The BBC is heading for a clash with the government after announcing its implacable opposition to any review of its funding that would result in sharing any of its £2.8bn licence fee with other broadcasters.

The prospect of the "top-slicing" of the licence fee, which would allow ITV or Channel 4 to pitch for funding for public service arts, religious or educational output, was raised in the green paper issued by the government earlier this year on the future of the corporation.

The BBC chairman, Michael Grade, described top-slicing as "a thoroughly bad idea" and said it was "not good news for viewers and listeners".

He said sharing public funds would "break the clear and well-understood line of accountability between the corporation and the licence fee payer" and would "seriously weaken the BBC's ability to invest" in programming.

Wider Angle Podcast #002 [May 24, 2005]
The best of the web shot into your ears.

This is officially version 1.0, although it's show 2. Out of beta faster than Google ever could be. Google's mother smells of elderberries.

Burning Question: Matt Drudge's New Army Boy [Gawker.com]
Radar Magazine: Britney is Laughing At All of Us

Jimmy Chamberlin Complex feat. Billy Corgan "Loki Cat" [Daily Refill]

iTunes 4.9 to support podcasting [/.]

DJ Dangermouse "Bush Boys" Video [GNN]

Usenet's Domination: Anonymity [Wired News]

Greg Walsh "The Sea of Something" [GarageBand]

Associated Press article on Translators in Iraq [Wider Angle / AP]

Jackson Brown "It's Mellow In the Sun" [GarageBand]

Grace Vs. O'Reilly: Evil At All Costs [Poynter Online / Romenesko]
DailyKos Presents YearlyKos

Stark Effect "I Miss You" [GarageBand]

Taxi Doll "Look At What You Get" [GarageBand]

Bono Requests Mobile Phones from Fans [Shey.net]
McSweeny's: Folk Instruments or B-Movie Monsters Fought By Gamera?

Jonathan Coulton "Ikea" [GarageBand]

It's one of the most dangerous civilian jobs in one of the world's most dangerous countries: translating Arabic for the U.S. military in Iraq.

One by one, little noticed in the daily mayhem, dozens of interpreters have been killed - mostly Iraqis but 12 Americans, too. They account for 40 percent of the 300-plus death claims filed by private contractors with the U.S. Labor Department.

Riding in bomb-blasted Humvees, tagging along on foot patrols in Fallujah or dashing into buildings behind Marines, translators are dying on the job, but also facing danger at home: hunted by insurgents who call them pro-American collaborators.

"If the insurgents catch us, they will cut off our heads because the imams say we are spies," said Mustafa Fahmi, 24, an Iraqi interpreter with Titan Corp., the biggest employer of linguists in Iraq. "I've been threatened like fifteen times, but I won't quit. A neighbor saw me driving and said, 'I am going to kill you.'"

Tracklisting for Wider Angle Podcast #001 [May 23, 2005]

A Brilliant Career "Sportsbar Superstar" (GarageBand)
Jessica Domain "Stay" (GarageBand)
O'er the Dreaming Earth "Climb to Midnight" (GarageBand)
Loquat "Swingest Chain" (GarageBand)
Peter Adams "The Disappeared" (GarageBand)
Sugarplum Fairies "#2 Kraft Paperbag" (GarageBand)

So if a smoking gun fires in the woods and nobody bothers reporting on it, does it still prove the president lied?

Eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq -- when President George W. Bush was still publicly saying things like "We're doing everything we can to avoid war" -- Bush had already predetermined that the invasion would occur. The case for war, however, was recognized as "thin" since Saddam Hussein was not an actual threat to the U.S. or to his neighbors. The evidence regarding his weapons of mass destruction and alleged links to terrorism, the selected rationales for the invasion, would have to be "fixed" in order to justify the invasion.

That is the testimony of a top-secret memo prepared for top-ranking British officials on July 23, 2002.

The memo was made public on May 1, 2005, when it was published in the Times of London. Read the entire memo here.

TVNewser The National Review has the scoop on CNN’s American Morning co-host, the one and only Bill Hemmer. Hemmer, it seems, is having problems getting his New York job moved to D.C. (There are still summer internships available, no?) Reports the Newser Review:

Hemmer “has no idea how to do anything himself,” a network source tells the blog. “When he does interviews, producers do everything, from writing his scripts to doing most of his interviews and footage is cut to make it look like he’s working.”

Herbert Hoover may have triggered the Great Depression, but he didn't invade another nation on false pretenses, authorize torture of prisoners, or try to stack the courts.

Telecom giants such as BT and France Telecom will also launch new initiatives to link the internet to the TV through a set-top box later this year. A company called HomeChoice already offers a similar service in the London area. HomeChoice programming is available via 1Mb, 2Mb or 4Mb broadband connections with up to 80 digital TV and radio channels

The BBC already has an interactive channel (BBCi), so online viewers should be ahead of the game in the UK. Executives reason that whether they view content on their computer screen, web-connected TV or a portable device, they'll want to access BBC shows "any time, any place, anywhere".

UPDATE
PBS and WGBH are doing this in schools.

PBS and WGBH have inked a deal with Library Video Company to provide schools with their choice of educational video -- all available on demand. "Every school in the U.S. and Canada is going to want to have access to their programs," said Andrew Schlessinger, CEO of Library Video Company. More...

A reader sent us another image from Microsoft’s Xbox 360 booth, where they are demoing real-time games powered by the Xbox 360. You can see in the picture that there is an Xbox 360 viewable through a little slot, implying that the games themselves are running on pre-production consoles, but if you actually come around to the side, you can see two Apple G5 PowerMacs, the development systems for the 360—plus a desktop fan to keep them cooled down.

Scandal? Not really. A bit disingenuous? Totally.

2. Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults. Maureen Dowd was still writing that Alberto R. Gonzales "called the Geneva Conventions 'quaint' " nearly two months after a correction in the news pages noted that Gonzales had specifically applied the term to Geneva provisions about commissary privileges, athletic uniforms and scientific instruments. Before his retirement in January, William Safire vexed me with his chronic assertion of clear links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, based on evidence only he seemed to possess.

No one deserves the personal vituperation that regularly comes Dowd's way, and some of Krugman's enemies are every bit as ideological (and consequently unfair) as he is. But that doesn't mean that their boss, publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., shouldn't hold his columnists to higher standards.

I didn't give Krugman, Dowd or Safire the chance to respond before writing the last two paragraphs. I decided to impersonate an opinion columnist.

Today is the day Army recruiters are taking a mandatory day off for some ethics training.

Lesson #1: Don't tell high school students that Iraq is safer than Cincinnati. That's not true, even though Jerry Springer lives there...

Lesson #2: No one is going to believe there is a $20,000 signing bonus

Lesson #3: Stop getting caught by undercover cameras

(Side note: Anyone else notice local media is doing the great investigative work these days?)

On today's show Rachel will play some really explosive sound from Cincinnati area recruiters lying to high school students.

The Washington Redskins, Manchester United and the Welsh rugby team have all been playing with an unfair advantage. Just seeing their red kit is seemingly enough to cow their opponents into submission even before a ball is kicked.

A pair of British anthropologists have discovered that teams are more likely to win if they wear red.

Teams who wear blue tend to take a more nuanced view of the issues and place a greater emphasis on personal freedom which can make it difficult to communicate their policy goals to rural areas without seeming self-indulgent or elitist.

No mention of green.

The creators of the NeCord Necoro cat robot should be fined and jailed for ignoring the the Uncanny Valley study, which found that robots that are almost-but-not-quite-completely lifelike are scary.
Link (Thanks, Tim!)

Researchers in South Korea have created the first human embryonic stem-cell lines using DNA from injured or sick donors who could theoretically benefit from such cells.

[...]

"This report brings science a giant step forward toward the day when some of humankind's most devastating diseases and injuries can be effectively treated through the use of embryonic stem cells," said the research team's leader, Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University.

However, the experiment also raises fresh ethical and regulatory questions about embryonic stem-cell research, just as Congress is preparing to take up the subject.

Thoughts?

Now I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice.

The PS3 is powered by the "Cell" chip, which aims to be significantly more powerful than Intel's Pentium 4, the most common chips for today's PCs, and any other existing game machine processors.

Sony developed the microprocessor with International Business Machines and Toshiba and its super-powerful "RSX" graphics chip with Nvidia.

With a built-in Ethernet port for high-speed internet access, PlayStation 3 allows gamers to surf the web while playing games.

"In addition to games, PS3 will, of course, be able to perform non-gaming functions such as digital music, movies and photographs even during game play," said Kutaragi.

The PS3 will feature Blu-ray, a next-generation DVD format backed by Sony. Blue-ray discs have far more capacity than current discs but their commercial development has been bogged down in industry standards debates reminiscent of Sony's lost battle in the 80's to promote its Betamax videotape standard.

It supports the simultaneous use of up to seven control pads, which can connect wirelessly via the Bluetooth standard to the console.

The ability to play older games was addressed by all three makers, with backward compatibility meaning owners of the new systems will be able to play games created for the existing Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft Xbox and Sony PlayStation 2.

Nintendo went a step further, announcing Tuesday to applause and cheers that Revolution's built-in wireless Internet will provide downloadable access to the thousands of games in company's 20-year-old library, going back to the original Nintendo Entertainment System.

Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's president, did not provide many details on the Revolution but he showed an enthusiastic audience a black prototype box with a blue, front-loading disc drive as well as a picture of several possible color schemes, ranging from silver to bright yellow.

He said the final box will be about the size of a stack of three DVD cases.

Last May 17, couples lined up in city and town halls across the state to apply for marriage licenses. Since then, some 6,200 of them have been handed out to same-sex couples.

Any educated moviegoer would know what to do, having watched that helpful sequence in “Gremlins” when a small, sage-colored beastie is fed into an electric blender. A fittingly frantic end, I feel, for the faux-pensive stillness on which the Yoda legend has hung.

Rowling said on her Web site that newspapers and bookshops in six countries will choose 70 children between ages 8 and 16 who aspire to be journalists to go to Edinburgh for the reading of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince."

Those attending the reading early July 16 will get a copy of the book to read before questioning Rowling at a "children's press conference" the next day, she said.

Newspapers in Britain, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada were running competitions starting Saturday to choose their representatives, Rowling said.

Bookshops and libraries in Britain and Ireland also would send children to the event, and two youngsters from Harry Potter fan Web sites have been invited to interview the writer, the announcement said.

It's been a long time since anyone cared about Penthouse magazine, so word today that its new owner is trying like the devil to revive its nearly lifeless body did not exactly get me excited.

Still, when I read that the publisher plans to kill off all those raunchy ads that clutter the back of the magazine, while at the same time beefing up coverage of music, sports, and gadgets, I experienced three nearly simultaneous sensations (none of which, sorry to report, were sexually gratifying):

1. A feathery shudder down my spine (which I interpreted as profound professional disappointment that the edit team at Penthouse had failed to define a fresh niche for itself, and had opted instead to follow the too-familiar formula of every other lad mag)

2. An uncomfortable stabbing pain down both forearms (a sense of loss, to my way of thinking, over all those beckoning back-of-book adverts for "Nasty Sluts," "Queens of Kink," and "Dark & Juicy" coeds), and

3. A deep throbbing in my head, in the area of my temples (which to me could only mean "the end is near" -- that is, Penthouse now has no chance of survival, none whatsover; it is going swiftly into that damp and sticky night).

[...]

In a marketplace that now boasts Maxim, Stuff, FHM, Razor, and a dozen other guy titles -- crotch-centric mags, to be sure, but all more smartly turned out than Penthouse -- the scribbling is on the back-alley wall.

A feckless and embarrassingly imitative Penthouse is slipping rapidly into oblivion.

And, tellingly, very few souls will shed a tear.

They want a mandatory 2-year prison term for anyone who knows someone is selling marijuana on a college campus and fails to report it to the police within 24 hours. They want a mandatory 5-year prison term for someone at a party who passes a marijuana joint to someone who has been enrolled in drug treatment at some point in their life. They want to expand the federal "three strikes and you're out" law to include new offenses, including mandating life imprisonment (with no possibility of parole) for anyone convicted a third time under the RAVE Act.

Take Action Here

These and other horrible provisions are inside Congressman Sensenbrenner's H.R. 1528 entitled "Defending America's Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2005". You helped us derail this bill last year, but now it's back - and it's longer and more draconian.

I'm not going to lie, we're up against the most powerful forces in the federal government. We hope you will continue to stand with us in this massive showdown. Some of you have already taken action in key congressional districts and it's had an impact. Once on the fast track, the bill has stalled in committee. Drug war extremists are regrouping, however, and it's only a matter of time before they strike back. We need to keep the heat on members of Congress to kill this bill.

The first flaw reported fools the browser into thinking software is being installed by a legitimate, or safe, website.

The second flaw happens when the software installation trigger does not properly check icon web addresses which contain JavaScript code.

A hacker could potentially take advantage of the security flaws to secretly launch malicious code or programs.

Mozilla advised people to download add-ons to its software manually from the Foundation's site.

BB reader Ed V says,

Here is a very unfortunate choice of identity for the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil. Gotta see it to believe. (page in Portuguese).

Link

Update: Holy shit! Looks like the university stuffed their banal logo where the sun don't shine. Wonder why? Butt do not fear, here is a back door: Link

Chick #1: I still haven't make him come! It's become, like, the major quest of my life.
Chick #2: So, basically, you're Captain Ahab and he's your Moby Dick?
Chick #1: Do you spend your spare time sitting around and thinking up these retorts?
Chick #2: I lead an empty life.

--Dallas BBQ, 8th & University

Woman on payphone: I totally woulda done it too, I woulda kicked her ass...I'm telling you if that bitch wasn't pregnant I woulda killed her. So instead I just punched the bitch.

--19th & 6th

Chick #1: One of my friend's moms has unholy thoughts about Charlie Rose.
Chick #2: One of my friends has dreams about having sex with her family's minivan. And not humping the side of it, either. We're talking full on, riding the stick-shift sex. Hmmm.
Chick #1: We run with an interesting crowd.

--1 train

The top Democrat on the Senate committee considering the nomination of John R. Bolton as United Nations ambassador scolded Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Saturday for ignoring Democratic requests for additional information about the embattled nominee.

In a curt letter to Rice, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., reiterated his requests for State Department documents related to charges that Bolton tried to bend or ignore government intelligence findings that did not suit his hard right ideology.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to vote on Bolton's nomination on Thursday. Biden repeated a warning to Rice that Democrats could hold up the vote if they are not satisfied they have investigated Bolton fully.

Do you have a pet peeve—some little thing that drives you completely bonkers? For certain people, it's the sound of a Jewish person dragging her fingernails across a chalkboard. For others, it's when Jews don't signal before making a turn. Me? I can't stand it when Jews talk during movies!

[...]

If there were some other way to see movies, I'd do it. I've tried renting movies, only to have the film interrupted midway through by a Jewish telemarketer or the sounds of the Jews upstairs blasting their rap music. I can only imagine what that guy with the fiddler on his roof went through. It's the Jewish year 5766, for cripes sake! It's time to learn some courtesy.

Microsoft, faced with unrelenting criticism from employees and gay rights groups over its decision to abandon support of a gay rights bill in Washington state, reversed course again yesterday and announced that it was now in support of the bill.

[...]

The bill, which would have extended protections against discrimination in employment, housing and other areas to gay men and lesbians, failed by one vote on April 21. But it is automatically up for a new vote next year because bills introduced in the Washington Legislature are active for two years even if they are voted down the first time.

After the defeat, Mr. Ballmer sent an e-mail message to company employees, defending the decision to withdraw support. In that note, Mr. Ballmer said that he and Microsoft's founder, Bill Gates, personally supported the measure but felt the company needed to focus its legislative efforts on measures that had a more direct connection to their business.

In yesterday's message Mr. Ballmer suggested that employees' responses had helped persuade Microsoft officials to renew their backing of the measure. More than 1,500 employees signed an internal petition demanding that the company support the bill, and scores wrote in protest to Mr. Ballmer and Mr. Gates.

“Lonely Planet is the bible in places like India,” Mark Ellingham, the founder of Rough Guides, the cheeky British series, says. “If they recommend the Resthouse Bangalore, then half the guesthouses there rename themselves Resthouse Bangalore.” The series’ authority is such that the team accompanying Jay Garner, the first American administrator of occupied Iraq, used “Lonely Planet Iraq” to draw up a list of historical sites that should not be bombed or looted. The writers Marianne Wiggins, Jilly Cooper, and Pico Iyer have used Lonely Planet guides to immerse themselves in the feel of a far-off locale for novels set in, respectively, Cameroon, Colombia, and Iran. And, in perhaps the greatest tribute, the Vietnamese have begun to manufacture ersatz Lonely Planet guides to complement their line of fake Rolexes.

At the same time, however, a number of the company’s authors worry that Lonely Planet itself has begun to manufacture ersatz Lonely Planet guides. As the company has expanded to cover Europe and America, markets already jammed with travel guides, it has been updating many of its guidebooks every two years, which requires that it use more and more contributors for each book—twenty-seven for the forthcoming edition of the United States guide alone. The books’ iconoclastic tone has been muted to cater to richer, fussier sorts of travellers, many of whom, like the Wheelers themselves, fly business class. And Lonely Planet’s original flagship, its “shoestring” series for backpackers, today makes up only three per cent of the company’s sales.

“Our Hawaii book used to be written for people who were picking their own guava and sneaking into the resort pool, and we were getting killed by the competition,” a Lonely Planet author named Sara Benson told me. “So we relaunched it for a more typical two-week American mid-market vacation. That sold, but it didn’t feel very Lonely Planet.” Every Lonely Planet series was relaunched last year in a slicker format that jettisoned much of the discussion of local history and economics; the books now commence, as most guides do, with snappy “Highlights” and “Itineraries.” “We’re trying to insinuate ourselves into Tony Wheeler’s world,” Mike Spring, the publisher of the hotels-and-fine-dining-focussed Frommer’s Travel Guides, says, “and he’s trying to insinuate himself into ours.”

I didn't think it was possible to love craigslist.org even more than I already do... but it is.

The bare-bones site — a trusted resource for everything from finding roommates to selling used cars in 105 cities in 23 countries, charges for very few classifieds, doesn't serve up traditional ads and plans no major changes to its business model.

Instead, founder Craig Newmark told Associated Press editors and writers in a bureau visit, his newest fascination is community journalism.

Newmark hopes to develop a pool of "talented amateurs" who could investigate scandals, cover politics and promote the most important and credible stories. Articles would be published on Internet sites ranging from Craigslist to individual Web logs, or blogs.

A USA Today Pentagon correspondent, Tom Squitieri, resigned under pressure today after the paper learned he had lifted quotes from another newspaper for a front-page story and used several other quotes, without attribution, that were cut during the editing process.

In a March 28 piece on the Army falling behind in ordering armored Humvees for Iraq, Squitieri quoted Brian Hart of Bedford, Mass., whose son was killed in the war. The same quote appeared, word for word, in the Indianapolis Star in May 2004:

LONDON, May 6 -- Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, the Bush administration's closest foreign ally, appeared poised early Friday to win a historic third successive term in office but with a significantly smaller parliamentary majority because of voter anger over his support for the war in Iraq, according to an early nationwide exit poll and projection.

Rasiej: The enormous economic and social benefits of providing low-cost, universal broadband access to small businesses, families with children in school, and our transportation system -- to take just three obvious examples -- far outweigh the relatively modest cost we will incur upfront to build and maintain a fully wired city. Look at Philadelphia, which projects that a wireless mesh network can be constructed on top of existing city infrastructure for about $6 a resident. I'd go so far as to say that universal Wi-Fi comes out to be the bargain of the 21st century. We made the decision to build the water supply system 150 years ago; we are at a similar crossroads looking into the 21st century.

Space-starved New Yorkers quickly turned their stoops into alternative living areas that were heavily used in summer. As a British traveler wrote in the 1820's: "It is customary to sit out of doors on the steps that ornament the entrances of the houses. On these occasions, friends assemble in the most agreeable and unceremonious manner. All sorts of cooling beverages and excellent confectionary are handed round, and the greatest good humor and gaiety prevail."

I want each and every one of those order-following, faceless, inhumane, automata to realize that they are guilty of nothing less than the political suppression of a dissident and would look far more apropos dressed in brown instead of blue.

One of the ways that people will be able to purchase the book will be direct from a company who will offer the book at a discount in exchange for printing that company's logo somewhere on the book (sorry for the lack of details...I think the company was either Kodak or Proctor and Gamble, the discount is $5, and the somewhere on the book is the cover but don't quote me on any of that). Anyway, a bit of evidence that advertising in books may be a viable business option in the future.

Financial issues aside, I believe the world is a better place without advertising absolutely everywhere. But if advertising makes books more affordable -- and in some cases absolutely free -- and therefore accessible to more people, it's hard to argue that it wouldn't be a good idea.

[J]ust 9.7% of people with incomes above $60,000 were obese in the 1970s, jumping to 26.8% by 2002.

"This is a very surprising finding," said Dr Robinson.

It "underlines the whole complexity" of the obesity epidemic, she said. In addition to the growing popularity of restaurants and the greater amount of time spent commuting, Dr Robinson speculated that longer working hours could also be contributing to the growing waistlines of people on higher incomes.

Dr Robinson called for more research into the problem. The report was presented to the American Heart Association.