"Now this constitution has come out, and it didn't come out as the national compact that we thought it was going to be," he said.

"And there's division there ... and that caused the situation to change a little bit," Casey said.

Is that what other countries called the U.S. Civil War? Division? Interesting.

"The enemy is losing," [Rumsfeld] said.

*So mad it's hard to type.

KARL ROVE: Boy Genius, Turd Blossom

Before, I had this period where I thought you can never re-use anything and always do a new style for everything. That basically proved impossible, besides you are in danger of just ripping different other styles off. Therefor, I was happy to explore that handmade typography idea a bit further. I absolutely don't think that this is the solution to every project. I think each project calls for different strategies, not just content-wise but also form wise.

With Father's Day approaching, many sons and daughters may run for the tie rack for a quintessential, if stereotypically sedate holiday tradition. But Shemtov said such a gift does not have to be humdrum, not if you buy neckwear from his product line.

Judith Miller's decision to testify before the CIA leak case grand jury came after she obtained a waiver offered "voluntarily and personally" by a source who said she was no longer bound by any pledge of confidentiality. Miller says the source -- I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff -- had made clear that he genuinely wanted her to testify. The Philadelphia Inquirer was the first news outlet to report Miller's release. (Read statements from Miller, NYT executive editor Bill Keller and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.)

Lullabubs are rocking robotic feet that fit under the legs of most baby-prisons, playpens, cribs, etc, and then synchronistically rock your proto-human back and forth without the need for boring adult intervention. Link (via Gizmodo)

A long quest for booty from the Spanish colonial era appears to be culminating in Chile with the announcement by a group of adventurers that they have found an estimated 600 barrels of gold coins and Incan jewels on the remote Pacific island.

"The biggest treasure in history has been located," said Fernando Uribe-Etxeverria, a lawyer for Wagner, the Chilean company leading the search. Mr Uribe-Etxeverria estimated the value of the buried treasure at US$10bn (£5.6bn).

The announcement set off ownership claims. The treasure hunters claimed half the loot was theirs and said they would donate it to non-profit-making organisations. The government said that they had no share to donate.

It also prompted speculation about the contents of what is considered to be one of the great lost treasures from the Spanish looting of South America. Chilean newspapers were filled with reports that the stash includes 10 papal rings and original gold statues from the Incan empire.

Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the powerful House Republican majority leader, was accused by a Texas grand jury today of criminal conspiracy in a campaign fund-raising scheme.

Mr. DeLay was indicted on one count charging that he violated state election laws in September 2002. Two political associates, John D. Colyandro and James W. Ellis, were indicted with him.

[...]

"I have done nothing wrong," Mr. DeLay said, adding that he had violated "no law, no regulation, no rule of the House."

Oh, I wouldn't exactly say that. Good riddance.

UPDATE
DeLay's response in Windows Media and Quicktime. He even talks about "hard work" and a "war to win." Sounds vaguely familiar.

Think Progress has more on Ronnie Earle.

Working some 600 miles south of Tokyo off the Bonin Islands, known in Japan as the Ogasawara Islands, they managed to photograph the creature with a robotic camera at a depth of 3,000 feet. During a struggle lasting more than four hours, the 26-foot-long animal took the proffered bait and eventually broke free, leaving behind an 18-foot length of tentacle.

The giant squid, the researchers conclude, "appears to be a much more active predator than previously suspected, using its elongate feeding tentacles to strike and tangle prey." They report that the tentacles could apparently coil into a ball, much as a python envelops its victims.

Iraqis expressed fury on Wednesday over the three-year jail sentence for Lynndie England, the U.S. soldier notorious for holding a naked inmate by a leash in Abu Ghraib prison, saying it exposed American hypocrisy.

"The whole thing is theatre. The Americans want to pretend they defend human rights and are a civilised nation," said Munir Abdel Sahib, a university lecturer.

"I believe that England would not have committed these crimes without orders from above."

In court testimony, England blamed her involvement on Graner, the abuse ringleader, who is now married to another woman who pleaded guilty to abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies. . .

Awesome set of food photos with little people on them. They're buried in a Flash interface (grr, Flash), but it's worth the trouble to find them. Skip the intro, click on "minimiam", and then select one of the "galeries" (primeurs, gourmandise, etc.). (via dtb) #

If you spend any time in restaurants, you might find May We Tell You About Our Specials This Evening? as hilarious as I did. #

"Floating Island" is a mini version of Central Park being towed around Manhattan by a tugboat (photos here)...it's a conceptual art piece by Robert Smithson. This weekend, a group of folks in a motorboat tried to board the floating park and install a miniature version of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's The Gates. When the captain of the boat towing the island "looked out across the East River Thursday afternoon and saw another piece of conceptual art gaining on him, he did not view the development kindly". #

The Mirror and Moss have been exchanging blows for a long time - long before The Mirror struck a direct hit with its newest report on Moss, who lost lucrative contracts with advertisers like H&M as a result.

Back in July, however, it was The Mirror that was apologizing. That was after Moss won a libel suit against the paper, collecting undisclosed damages over reports in The Sunday Mirror that she had collapsed into a cocaine-induced coma in 2001 in Barcelona.

The newspaper was forced at that time to apologize for the distress and embarrassment it had caused Moss.

During her sabbatical, she said, she would often sit in her backyard in Venice, Calif., thinking and playing with pine cones. "I was making little pine-cone people with razor blades," Ms. Apple said, raking her fingers through her wavy brown hair. "That's all I did."

Her inertia did not sit well with some in her immediate circle. They accused Ms. Apple of being lazy, crazy and unproductive, she said. "It really hurt a couple of close relationships of mine," said Ms. Apple, who split with her boyfriend Paul Thomas Anderson, the film director, three years ago. "It infuriated me because they couldn't believe that when I'm sitting and thinking that's how I work."

Several years ago she decided that she was ready to begin recording again and called on Jon Brion, who produced "When the Pawn. ..." Their collaboration, while smooth before, was shaky this time. "Jon would play me stuff and I wouldn't be able to tell what I liked and what I didn't like," Ms. Apple said. After emerging from a deep funk, she eventually decided to rerecord her songs with the producer Mike Elizondo, who has worked with Dr. Dre.

According to Ms. Apple, things were going well until executives at Sony began asking her to submit individual songs for their approval. Only then would they determine how much more recording money she would receive. Sony had already sunk nearly $800,000 into recording the original version of "Extraordinary Machine."

"They basically wanted me to audition my songs," Ms. Apple said, visibly offended.

* Sufjan Stevens will play an acoustic set at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City on Monday, Oct 3, headlining a stellar lineup of local artists including Adam Green, Akron/Family, Grizzly Bear, Wooden Wand and Other Passengers. "Special guests" are promised, and all proceeds go to the Salvation Army.

Inmates in Templeman III, one of several buildings in the Orleans Parish Prison compound, reported that as of Monday, August 29, there were no correctional officers in the building, which held more than 600 inmates. These inmates, including some who were locked in ground-floor cells, were not evacuated until Thursday, September 1, four days after flood waters in the jail had reached chest-level.

“Of all the nightmares during Hurricane Katrina, this must be one of the worst,” said Corinne Carey, researcher from Human Rights Watch. “Prisoners were abandoned in their cells without food or water for days as floodwaters rose toward the ceiling.”

Human Rights Watch called on the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct an investigation into the conduct of the Orleans Sheriff's Department, which runs the jail, and to establish the fate of the prisoners who had been locked in the jail. The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, which oversaw the evacuation, and the Orleans Sheriff’s Department should account for the 517 inmates who are missing from the list of people evacuated from the jail. [...]

According to officers who worked at two of the jail buildings, Templeman 1 and 2, they began to evacuate prisoners from those buildings on Tuesday, August 30, when the floodwaters reached chest level inside. These prisoners were taken by boat to the Broad Street overpass bridge, and ultimately transported to correctional facilities outside New Orleans.

But at Templeman III, which housed about 600 inmates, there was no prison staff to help the prisoners. Inmates interviewed by Human Rights Watch varied about when they last remember seeing guards at the facility, but they all insisted that there were no correctional officers in the facility on Monday, August 29. A spokeswoman for the Orleans parish sheriff’s department told Human Rights Watch she did not know whether the officers at Templeman III had left the building before the evacuation.

According to inmates interviewed by Human Rights Watch, they had no food or water from the inmates' last meal over the weekend of August 27-28 until they were evacuated on Thursday, September 1. By Monday, August 29, the generators had died, leaving them without lights and sealed in without air circulation. The toilets backed up, creating an unbearable stench.

“They left us to die there,” Dan Bright, an Orleans Parish Prison inmate told Human Rights Watch at Rapides Parish Prison, where he was sent after the evacuation.

As the water began rising on the first floor, prisoners became anxious and then desperate. Some of the inmates were able to force open their cell doors, helped by inmates held in the common area. All of them, however, remained trapped in the locked facility.

“The water started rising, it was getting to here,” said Earrand Kelly, an inmate from Templeman III, as he pointed at his neck. “We was calling down to the guys in the cells under us, talking to them every couple of minutes. They were crying, they were scared. The one that I was cool with, he was saying ‘I'm scared. I feel like I'm about to drown.' He was crying.”

Some inmates from Templeman III have said they saw bodies floating in the floodwaters as they were evacuated from the prison. A number of inmates told Human Rights Watch that they were not able to get everyone out from their cells.

"We are satisfied that the arms decommissioned represent the totality of the IRA's arsenal."

Welcoming the move, Prime Minister Tony Blair said IRA decommissioning had been "finally accomplished".

The general said: "We have observed and verified events to put beyond use very large quantities of arms which we believe include all the arms in the IRA's possession.

It may be the oddest tale to emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico.

Experts who have studied the US navy's cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying 'toxic dart' guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet's smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.

Dolphins have been trained in attack-and-kill missions since the Cold War. The US Atlantic bottlenose dolphins have apparently been taught to shoot terrorists attacking military vessels. Their coastal compound was breached during the storm, sweeping them out to sea. But those who have studied the controversial use of dolphins in the US defence programme claim it is vital they are caught quickly.

For a $100 donation to aid Katrina victims Brian Wilson will give you a personal call. For a $50 donation David Lee Roth will move into your garage.

Donna sez, "EFF has a new alert that lets you tell Congress to take a close look at WIPO's broadcast treaty before it slips under the wire and we get stuck with another WIPO-hatched debacle like the DMCA": Link. (Thanks, Donna!)

You are a
Social Liberal
(88% permissive)

and an...
Economic Liberal
(5% permissive)

You are best described as a:
Socialist

You exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness.

Hey, isn't Rove in charge of reconstruction efforts in the gulf coast? Because if he is, what the heck is he doing fundraising for Republicans in North Dakota, and on the exact same day that Rita is expected to make landfall?

The Old Testament Book of Ecclesiastes has a few words to say about novelty, fashion and innovation.

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be:
And that which is done is that which shall be done:
And there is no new thing under the sun."

The Regency TR-1 transistor radio, made in 1954, had a decent claim to be a genuine piece of innovation, however. It was, by popular agreement, the world's first commercially sold transistor pocket radio.

Small enough to hold in your hand, and powered by batteries, it came in a variety of delicious colours, including green, pearlescent blue, lavender, white and red.

So far, the only plan for homeless residents to move back to New Orleans is Bush's bizarre Urban Homesteading Act. In his speech from the French Quarter, Bush made no mention of the neighborhood's roughly 1,700 unrented apartments and instead proposed holding a lottery to hand out plots of federal land to flood victims, who could build homes on them. But it will take months (at least) before new houses are built, and many of the poorest residents won't be able to carry the mortgage, no matter how subsidized. Besides, it barely touches the need: The Administration estimates that in New Orleans there is land for only 1,000 "homesteaders."

The truth is that the White House's determination to turn renters into mortgage payers is less about solving Louisiana's housing crisis than indulging an ideological obsession with building a radically privatized "ownership society." It's an obsession that has already come to grip the entire disaster zone, with emergency relief provided by the Red Cross and Wal-Mart and reconstruction contracts handed out to Bechtel, Fluor, Halliburton and Shaw--the same gang that spent the past three years getting paid billions while failing to bring Iraq's essential services to prewar levels [see Klein, "The Rise of Disaster Capitalism," May 2]. "Reconstruction," whether in Baghdad or New Orleans, has become shorthand for a massive uninterrupted transfer of wealth from public to private hands, whether in the form of direct "cost plus" government contracts or by auctioning off new sectors of the state to corporations.

An unsigned rapper who sells his home-made tapes on the street emerged as the unlikely star of the 10th annual Mobo awards last night. Hailing from Hornsey, north London, 23-year-old Sway Dasafo triumphed over industry heavyweights 50 Cent and The Game to win the award for best hip-hop act. [...]

Sway (real name Derek Andrew Safo) honed his craft on pirate radio and credits the BBC's black music station 1xtra with providing him with his first break back in 2002.

In the course of his brief, DIY career, he has attracted plaudits for a witty, complex rapping style that contrasts with the violent imagery of some of his counterparts. "I'm a positive person. The positivity comes out in my music," he said. "I don't go round holding guns to people's heads so I won't rap about holding guns to people's heads."

Sway distributes his mixtapes at markets and independent record shops and has so far resisted the temptation to sign to a major label. "I want to build up my own name first," he explained. "I need to prove I can be artistically independent." So far the tactic seems to be working. Sales of the mixtapes run in the thousands and he is currently putting the finishing touches to his debut album.

* * Beatles-Beatles wrote to mention a bill entitled "The Online Freedom of Speech Act". The act, if passed, would make the Internet into a form of media subject to campaign finance laws. From the article: "Amid the explosion of political activity on the Internet, a federal court has instructed the six-member Federal Election Commission to draw up regulations that would extend the nation's campaign finance and spending limits to the Web. The FEC, in its initial rules, had exempted the Internet. Bloggers told the Committee on House Administration that regulations encompassing the Internet, even ones just on advertising, would have a chilling effect on free speech. The FEC vice chairman also questioned the necessity of any rules."

Withdrawing troops from Iraq, Bush said, “would allow the terrorists to claim an historic victory over the United States.”

If terrorists are not defeated, they will “make that country a source of terror and instability … for decades.”

Army engineers have warned that flood defences damaged by Hurricane Katrina can only cope with 15cm (6in) of rain.

A stream of water at least nine metres (30ft) wide was reported to be spilling into the low-lying Lower Ninth Ward.

[...]

Up to 24 elderly evacuees died when the bus they were travelling in caught fire on a gridlocked motorway carrying traffic from Houston to Dallas.

Meanwhile, President Bush is going to Colorado to monitor hurricane preparations. (?!)

A Times correction, referring, natch, to a Alessandra Stanley TV review:

A television review yesterday about “How I Met Your Mother” and “Out of Practice,” on CBS, misstated the name of the popular show, ended last season, that the network is trying to replace with another hit. It is “Everybody Loves Raymond,” not “All About Raymond.”

Because why would you expect a TV critic to know the correct title of last season’s top-rated sitcom?

The fallout from last week’s Daily Mirror photo spread of model Kate Moss enjoying a healthy line or twelve of cocaine continues, as stalwart label Burberry followed Chanel and H&M in dropping Moss from their campaign. Cosmetics company Rimmel is also reviewing their contract with Moss, having officially expressed their dismay with the model for clearly wearing Clinique eyeshadow while being photographed blowing rails.

And how is Moss coping with her shame spiral? By smoking crack. So at least she can still pose in Vice or something.

The lesson is don't do blow in public. But really, even 14-year-olds know that. Andy Borowitz dreams up a better world for Ms. Moss:

One day after published photos of her allegedly using cocaine caused retailer H & M to drop her from an upcoming advertising campaign, supermodel Kate Moss has already bounced back nicely, scoring an unprecedented seven-figure endorsement deal with Colombia’s largest drug cartel.

According to those familiar with the deal, Ms. Moss signed a three-year contract for eight million dollars, with a street value of forty million.

The endorsement contract, believed to be the first ever offered by a major illegal drug ring, was announced today at the cartel’s headquarters in Bogotá, Colombia.

Sitting at a table before a room packed with reporters, a somewhat dazed Ms. Moss was flanked by beaming members of the cartel’s top management, including the international fugitive, drug lord Ricardo Diaz.

“This deal with Kate Moss is much, much more than an endorsement contract,” said Mr. Diaz. “We have every intention of making Kate Moss the new face of cocaine.”

Homosexuals, even those who are celibate, will be barred from becoming Roman Catholic priests, a church official said Wednesday, under stricter rules soon to be released on one of the most sensitive issues facing the church.

The official, said the question was not "if it will be published, but when," referring to the new ruling about homosexuality in Catholic seminaries, a topic that has stirred much recent rumor and worry in the church. The official, who has authoritative knowledge of the new rules, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the church's policy of not commenting on unpublished reports.

He said that while Pope Benedict XVI had not yet signed the document, it would probably be released in the next six weeks.

In addition to the new document, which will apply to the church worldwide, Vatican investigators have been instructed to visit each of the 229 seminaries in the United States.

You know, to weed out the rest of the gay.

Laura Bush said Tuesday, in a speech before the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., that much more good than bad has come from the response to the catastrophe, no matter what Americans see on TV. [...]

"Maybe the media hasn't shown us that much, but we've read about it and we do know about it."

She said evacuees she met in her three trips to the hurricane zone are thankful they don't have to start over, from zero, because of donations and others acts of kindness.

"That's what I've seen at each of the shelters I've visited," she said. "I've never heard a single word of complaint."

No word on whether this malware also deletes your web-browser, email client and IM software, since all these, too, are sometimes used to infringe on copyright. Link (Thanks, Lu!)

The National Enquirer is just out with a bombshell. The tab reports on its website today — for issues available in New York tomorrow and nationwide on Friday — that George W. Bush is back on the sauce, caught by Laura downing a shot after he learned of the Katrina crisis.

His worried wife yelled at him: “Stop, George.”

Following the shocking incident, disclosed here for the first time, Laura privately warned her husband against “falling off the wagon” and vowed to travel with him more often so that she can keep an eye on Dubya, the sources add.

“When the levees broke in New Orleans, it apparently made him reach for a shot,” said one insider. “He poured himself a Texas-sized shot of straight whiskey and tossed it back. The First Lady was shocked and shouted: “Stop George!”

The hurricane center said Rita had become "an extremely dangerous" Category 5 hurricane with maximum sustained winds near 165 mph (265 kph) and higher gusts as it moved over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

Rita lashed the Florida Keys on Tuesday but did little damage to the vulnerable Florida islands.

Rita's path included the Texas coast southwest of Galveston, where in 1900 at least 8,000 people died in the deadliest recorded U.S. hurricane.

A JetBlue airliner with faulty landing gear touched down safely Wednesday at Los Angeles International Airport after circling the region for three hours with its front wheels turned sideways, unable to be retracted into the plane.

The pilot landed by balancing on the back wheels, then eased onto the front tires, which shot flames along the runway before tearing off. The metal landing gear scraped for the final several yards.

The landing was made at an auxiliary runway set apart from the main terminals. Fire trucks and emergency crews massed near the runway to help the 139 passengers and six crew members

Within minutes of landing, the plane's door was opened and passengers walked down a stairway onto the tarmac, where buses waited

No injuries were immediately reported, fire officials said.

Well, it just so happens that I got the opportunity to visit the set of Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride in March, and Burton was right: there is something special about “the hand-made thing,” even though there was a significant digital component to the production as well. Indeed, the puppets, the sets, the energy were eventful to witness firsthand, particularly on such a signature Burton movie where graphic style is everything. The thing is, you can’t really appreciate the craft of stop motion until you observe it up close. Yes, it’s slow, meticulous and painstaking. Or, as actress Helena Bonham Carter observed in Toronto, “All animators are anal because it’s all about the detail.” And when you’re shooting two or three seconds of footage a day, one frame at a time with a still camera for 50 weeks, that’s about as detailed and labor intensive as it gets.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, sold all his stock in his family’s hospital corporation about two weeks before it issued a disappointing earnings report and the price fell nearly 15 percent.

Frist held an undisclosed amount of stock in Hospital Corporation of America, based in Nashville, Tenn., the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chain. On June 13, he instructed the trustee managing the assets to sell his HCA shares and those of his wife and children, said Amy Call, a spokeswoman for Frist.

Frist’s shares were sold by July 1 and those of his wife and children by July 8, Call said. The trustee decided when to sell the shares and the Tennessee Republican had no control over the exact time they were sold, she said.

HCA shares peaked at midyear, climbing to $58.22 a share on June 22. After slipping slightly for two weeks, the price fell to $49.90 on July 13 after the company announced its quarterly earnings would not meet analysts’ expectations. On Tuesday, the shares closed at $48.76.

The value of Frist’s stock at the time of the sale was not disclosed. Earlier this year, he reported holding blind trusts valued at $7 million to $35 million.

Why does this matter? Because anal sex is far more dangerous than oral sex. According to data released earlier this year by the Centers for Disease Control, the probability of HIV acquisition by the receptive partner in unprotected oral sex with an HIV carrier is one per 10,000 acts. In vaginal sex, it's 10 per 10,000 acts. In anal sex, it's 50 per 10,000 acts. Do the math. Oral sex is 10 times safer than vaginal sex. Anal sex is five times more dangerous than vaginal sex and 50 times more dangerous than oral sex. Presumably, oral sex is far more frequent than anal sex. But are you confident it's 50 times more frequent?

A CDC fact sheet explains the risks of anal sex. First, "the lining of the rectum is thin and may allow the [HIV] virus to enter the body." Second, "condoms are more likely to break during anal sex than during vaginal sex." These risks don't just apply to HIV. According to the new survey report, the risk of transmission of other sexually transmitted diseases is likewise "higher for anal than for oral sex," and the risk "from oral sex is also believed to be lower than for vaginal intercourse."

“I used to wear real fur,” says Martha Stewart in her new video for PETA, “but, like many others, I had a change of heart when I learned what actually happens to the animals.” Her brief fur-trade exposé, filmed on the set of her TV talk show, shows how animals are trapped, strangled, and electrocuted for their pelts.

FEMA's disastrous performance following Katrina has drawn into question both the hiring of failed horse-trader Michael Brown to head the agency and the decision to fold FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security. Well, with the news that Julie Meyers, the Bush administration's nominee for head of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (a part of the Department of Homeland Security), is also the niece of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the wife of the DHS's chief of staff, we finally understand the White House's promise that their contribution to architecture of federal government would be a bureaucracy-free model of efficiency. They got rid of a lot of paperwork by dispensing with resumes.

Henry V .009 writes "BusinessWeek calls him Microsoft's Deep Throat. Although Steve Ballmer denies reading the blog, there are plenty at Microsoft who do. Mini-Microsoft says he wants to "slim down Microsoft into a lean, mean, efficient customer pleasing profit making machine." The user comment section of the site is the real gold: thousands of comments from Microsoft employees who tend to have a dim view about the company's recent evolution. And Microsoft may even be responding to all the internal criticism."

They are divided about the next phase for digital download pricing, with some contemplating a tiered model that could charge more in the first days a popular album is available and for songs recorded exclusively for iTunes. Others prefer to wait before tinkering with the existing system.

Jimmy Iovine, chairman of Universal Music's biggest unit, Interscope Records, said last month that not enough consumers are buying music online to warrant raising prices.

"I don't think it's time yet," Iovine told The New York Times. "We need to convert a lot more people to the habit of buying music online. I don't think a way to convert more people is to raise prices."

On Thursday, Moss met with her overlords at H&M to apologize for embarassing the retail chain, which has signed Moss to model one of its upcoming clothing lines. Moss’ contract stipulated that she abide by a company policy that all models be “healthy, wholesome and sound,” and Moss admitted to her employers that the allegations of her drug use were true. Which means she failed to nail a single one of H&M’s three pithy requirements — but at least she stayed skinny enough to model their new $19 peasant vest.

BBC announces that John Peel day will be a celebration of John's life and massive contribution to music and broadcasting with as many venues as possible staging gigs across the UK under the banner of Peel Day. More than 300 gigs across the world have been organized.

The night before Radio 1 are putting on a special night at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London. The line up so far includes New Order, The Fall, Super Furry Animals, Laura Cantrell, Jawbone, Misty in Roots and Venetian Snares. Find out more.

Radio 1 will be broadcasting a mammoth six hour show from 7pm on the Thursday presented by a host of Radio 1 DJs. Live music from the nationwide gigs will feature throughout as well as highlights from the London gig recorded the night before

We'll also be launching a new Peel website with details of Peel Day gigs across the world, every tracklisting from every session, audio and video and a huge gallery of photographs, all celebrating John's life and work.

How you can be involved!
We're encouraging as many people as possible to organise their own gig as a tribute to John. This can be anything from a couple of unsigned bands down the local pub to hiring an entire venue and booking some Happy Hardcore DJs! It's entirely up to you.

If you are producing posters or fliers to promote the event you can download a logo to use on them. We'd also like to hear about what you are organising.

Tell us about your event
Download the John Peel Day logo
Highlights on the night
Radio 1's Queen Elizabeth Hall gig

The front page of the Washington Post this morning brought some wonderful, unexpected news: According to the U.S. military, we're winning the war in Iraq. Hooray! The way you can tell we're winning? All the dead people! Hoo-ra. . . wait. Oh, they're dead people on the other side. Sure, they've killed a lot of our side, too, but we've killed more. (Who gets to claim the suicide bombers, we wonder.) Hey, this arithmetical approach to war seems familiar somehow...Guess there's more than one way to learn the lessons of Vietnam.

DANIELS: I actually, I was struck that people did not blame President Bush. They like this guy. I think we're forgetting that -- the likeability factor. He's the same guy that was on 9-11 with the bullhorn. He hasn't changed, and people still relate to his character.

MATTHEWS: Which people are you talking about? The white folks still in the Quarter, or who are you talking about?

DANIELS: The white folks still in the Quarter, in the French Quarter. They are not blaming President Bush. They told me directly. They're blaming New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. But they are not blaming this man. They think he cares.

After the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee is questioning whether changes are needed in disaster-response policies, including repealing a law that prohibits the use of federal troops in domestic law enforcement.

The law dates to the 1870s. It was a reaction to the deployment of federal troops to former Confederate states to supervise elections and maintain law and order, known as Posse Comitatus. It was a practice that many in Congress were uncomfortable with because of the potential for abuse.

Verso Technologies (www.verso.com) announced the rollout of a "carrier-grade applications filter" that can block so-called bandwidth drains such as Skype, P2P messaging, streaming media, and instant messaging.

Verso CEO Monty Bannerman, founding CTO of the NAP of Americas, says service providers are gung-ho about his new product offering.

Bannerman claims that Skype and other P2P applications were generating up to 30 per cent of existing network traffic load as of last year according to presentations at the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG).

Could this technology be used to block Vonage service? "Sure," said Bannerman. "But we wouldn't do that."

Sagmeister wrapped up his talk with a list of things he has learned and how he's used that list in a recent series of projects:

• "everything i do always comes back to me"
• "trying to look good limits my life"
• "everybody thinks they are right"
• "money does not make me happy"
• "thinking life will be better in the future is stupid. i have to live now"
• "complaining is silly. act or forget."
• "having guts always works out for me"

In short, freelancers claim a flexible schedule as the primary benefit of the lifestyle (duh) and they mostly work in the some of the city's bigger industries: advertising, publishing, film, television, technology and the arts. The median freelancer income is $50,000 a year, but the pay ranges widely. Finally, less than half (47%) save money for retirement each month, while a majority of them vote in national and local elections.

Representatives from the Union claim that this information should help push freelancers into the spotlight as "this is the beginning of their era. They're the group who's going to define what the next safety net is going to be, because they're the ones who need it."

Elected on the premise that government is ineffective, incompetent and wasteful, the Bush Administration has devoted its time in office to proving its own point--something Hurricane Katrina brought home to Americans with a resounding bang. But the Bush record on the environment is in a category all its own. Only when we begin to grasp that those who are driving Bush environmental policies do not share the most basic values and beliefs that have guided such policy-making for over half a century does their behavior start to make sense. This much is clear: The Bush Administration does not respect a broad American consensus that the quality of our lives is directly linked to the integrity and health of the environment.

[...]

If you believe that God made the world for you and instructed you to dominate it and be fruitful, then you are likely to see yourself as above and beyond the natural world. If you are God's chosen, then how can you fear that He will not provide for you no matter how large your numbers grow or what you do to your surroundings? God, after all, can change nature's laws, which are part of His "intelligent design" in the first place. So you are unlikely to fret about practicing environmental restraint or worry about environmental toxins--righteousness being the best prophylactic against disease in a world where God's will is done.

If you believe that the world's end is imminent, then why not use it before you lose it? If you believe that when the world-ending moment arrives, you will be "raptured" away and Christ will return to rule at last, then, hey, bring it on! Those who are "left behind," as fundamentalist Tim LaHaye describes it in his bestselling novels, deserve to suffer because they failed to accept Christ as their personal savior. So the President's fundamentalist base favors the present over a future they disown.

Thirty-five percent (35%) of Americans now say that President Bush has done a good or excellent job responding to Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. That’s down from 39% before his speech from New Orleans.

The latest Rasmussen Reports survey shows that 41% give the President poor marks for handling the crisis, that’s up from 37% before the speech.

There are three buttons labeled POWER, but there are times — especially if my son and his friends, who are not afraid of features, have changed the settings — when I honestly cannot figure out how to turn the TV on. I stand there, holding three remote controls, pressing buttons at random, until eventually I give up and go turn on the dishwasher. It has been, literally, years since I have successfully recorded a TV show. That is how "smart" my appliances have become.

And now the appliance manufacturers want to give us even MORE features. Do you know what this means? It means that some night you'll open the door of your "smart" refrigerator, looking for a beer, and you'll hear a pleasant, cheerful voice — recorded by the same woman who informs you that Your Call Is Important when you call a business that does not wish to speak with you personally — telling you: "Your celery is limp." You will not know how your refrigerator knows this, and, what is worse, you will not know who else your refrigerator is telling about it ("Hey, Bob! I hear your celery is limp!").

And if you want to try to make the refrigerator STOP, you'll have to decipher Owner's Manual instructions written by and for nuclear physicists ("To disable the Produce Crispness Monitoring feature, enter the Command Mode, then select the Edit function, then select Change Vegetable Defaults, then assume that Train A leaves Chicago traveling westbound at 47 miles per hour, while Train B...").

Every night during the time I spent in New Orleans, before relief convoys arrived, I used a facecloth and precious bottle of spring water (looted) to scrub my feet, applying antibiotic ointment (looted) on the scrapes and rashes and weird boils that resulted from wading shoeless in the bilge. Shoeless because both sandals and sneakers had quickly shredded with immersion.

This — the stuff that eats leather and canvas — is what people were living in, struggling through, in search of food and potable water, those who either stayed by stubborn choice or lacked the wherewithal to leave when levees were breached; Lake Pontchartrain surging over the pitifully feeble buffer, natural barriers and sponging wetlands destroyed long ago by coastal development and sluicing designed to protect ships.

Even now, three weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck and with 22 repaired pumping stations suctioning millions of gallons a day out of the city — 40 per cent of which remains submerged — the dangers contained in that water have not subsided. And the sediment, the sludge, the "bacterial soup" left behind in a metropolis rendered a massive, pestilent, disease-breeding swamp, might actually be even more toxic than the receding floodwaters that are dropping by about 30 centimetres a day.

020: The Books
The Lemon of Pink
[Tomlab; 2003]

The Books' brand of sound collage-- pristine violin squeals, weird vocal samples, chopped-up organics, and plenty of silence-- manages to scramble classic Americana into something entirely unfamiliar. The Lemon of Pink has plenty of banjo, but no beard: Despite all those scratchy strings, the Books never dip into folk structure (or folk cliché), opting instead to twist all those disparate bits into a glitchy, throbbing, and beautiful whole. Unsurprisingly, The Lemon of Pink can seem strange and familiar all at once-- not unlike tumbling down a rabbit hole, arms flailing, skirt flying high, mouth half-open, eyes wide, slowly taking in all the swirling, oddly delicious distortions... and thinking that you must be in for quite an adventure. --Amanda Petrusich

Mathematics students have cause to celebrate. A University of New South Wales academic, Dr Norman Wildberger, has rewritten the arcane rules of trigonometry and eliminated sines, cosines and tangents from the trigonometric toolkit.

what are you afraid of regarding the future?
I'm afraid of the end of human species.
the fact that we are at the brink of extermination.
the earth itself has been so defiled and so abused
that in a very short time, and I mean in a really very short time,
it will not be able to support its inhabitants.
particularly since we and the world are responding
so poorly to the situation.

On September 8, CNN anchorette Kyra Phillips was chewing into House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for “continuing to criticize the administration, and criticize the director of FEMA... I think it’s unfair that FEMA is just singled out. There are so many people responsible for what has happened in the state of Louisiana.”

Instead of smiling through clenched teeth, the San Francisco Democrat bit back: “I’m sorry that you think it’s unfair. But I don’t . . . If you want to make a case for the White House, you should go on their payroll.”

By September 12, even the White House admitted that FEMA had been its own disaster area by pushing out its Arabian-horseman-turned-jackass head, Michael Brown. (Bush finally admitted on Tuesday that the buck was going to stop with him whether he liked it or not. “To the extent the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility,” he said.) That same day, CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, announced the hiring of DeLay’s chief of staff as a top Washington lobbyist. This news, and its timing, prompted Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy to tell the L.A. Weekly: “Time Warner aligning itself with the right-wing DeLay machine should send shudders [down] CNN and HBO. Clearly, TW wants DeLay insurance so it won’t have to face cable-ownership safeguards, à la carte rules and broadband non-discrimination policies.”

President Bush on Friday ruled out raising taxes to pay for Gulf Coast reconstruction, saying other government spending must be cut. "You bet it will cost money, but I'm confident we can handle it," he said.

Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush's chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government and includes the direct involvement of Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development.

DutchSter writes "In the wake of other schools announcing the theft of hardware containing sensitive student information, Miami University, of Oxford, Ohio, has announced that a file containing the name, Social Security number, the grade point average for the Fall 2002 semester, cumulative grade point average, and other related academic information, such as credit hours attempted that semester, for all 21,000 students who attended the Fall 2002 term has been available on a web server for the last three years. The discovery was made this week and the university is taking steps to deal with the fall-out sure to come."

phaedo00 writes "Apple has launched support for video podcasting in the Podcast section of the iTMS. Ars Technica has a decent write up of the news along with speculation on what this means in the way of a video iPod and Apple's recent application for a patent on the phrase 'iPodcast.'" From the article: "The quiet, fanfare-less launch (in fact, it's not even clear when it was launched) is a bit surprising for the company, but there may be a reason: there's not too many video podcasts out there in the wild. Furthermore, video podcasts are currently only playable on your computer, although it seems clear enough that a video iPod is on the way. If you didn't believe it before, you should definitely believe it now. For now, it looks like video podcasting support is limited."

Many of the tools built into Sparkle you will recognize from Macromedia's Flash 8; such as animation timelines, vector and bitmap image support, drawing tools, event-driven interactivity, drawing tools, support for video and audio, and more.

There are, however, key technologies supported in Sparkle that separate it from Flash. One of the first things that will impress you with Sparkle is support for 3D. Macromedia's Flash loosely supports 3D through complex scripts or animation created with products such as eRain's Swift 3D. Flash does not have the capability to support 3D models. Sparkle gives you this ability and to stunning effect.

Sparkle also gives developers the full breadth of programming languages such as C# to add interactivity to their solutions. You will find familiar development tools such as IntelliSense and debugging along with data aware controls that can be bound to databases such as SQL Server.

9:11 PM The people in Biloxi look kind of pissed. Why should they be? the post office is PROCESSING THEIR CHANGE OF ADDRESS. What more do these people want??
9:12 PM When does he announce the free chocolate and ice cream?

Gary Hershorn, Reuters' news editor for pictures, says he's responsible for zooming in on President Bush's bathroom break note and deciding to transmit the photo to Reuters clients. Photographer Rick Wilking didn't know what the note said when he shot the picture, says Hershorn. "He was the just the guy who pushed the button." (Related story.)

In the short period before the White House announces the venue, please write in with two suggestions:

1. Where the president should give his address, and
2. Where you think he actually will give it.

We'll post the best answers tomorrow.

Please send submissions to slatepolitics@gmail.com. All respondents agree to have their e-mails and names published unless they explicitly request otherwise.

Wonkette has some thoughts:

1. Where should the president give his address: In the space on the form where they ask you to. Barring that, he should give it from a position of regret and compassion, preferably while wearing an unwashed set of clothes that he has worn for a week while wading through toxic muck and "finding" food and water.

2. Where he will give his address from: His high horse.

The Agriculture Street Landfill (ASL) is situated on a 95-acre site in New Orleans, Orleans Parish, Louisiana. The ASL is a federally registered Superfund site, and is on the National Priorities List of highly contaminated sites requiring cleanup and containment. A few years ago the site, which sits underneath and beside houses and a school, was fenced and covered with clean soil. However, three feet or more of flood waters could potentially cause the landfill's toxic contents – the result of decades of municipal and industrial waste dumping – to leach out.

Time Inc. chief Ann Moore is thrilled to have the African-American staff on board.

“They’re always so lively,” she told us. “They can turn even an ordinary staff meeting into a revival meeting.”

Delone Catholic High School in McSherrystown, Pa., has a fun fundraising program called "Stop the Bop."

Suggested by a few members of the student council, the school is playing Hanson's 1996 hit "MMMBop" through the loudspeakers before classes begin, between periods and during lunch. The idea? Annoy students into donating; have them pay to stop the music.

The goal is $3,000, which could be reached if each of the 659 students donates $5.

"MMMBop" has been playing since Wednesday, and the school has raised about $2,300 so far.

[...]

"It's pretty annoying. I'm getting kind of sick of it. But we're doing it for a good cause."

She's got an on-set runway, y'all.

If its Monday premiere was any indication, The Tyra Banks Show isn't so much a talk show as it is a circus. Part of it is because Tyra Banks is almost literally a clown (being, like, a quarter chromosome away from a drag queen). The other thing that gives this show the three-ring feel is Tyra's seeming willingness to pack all 180 ideas she hatched for show segments into its first week. Here's her mission statement, as outlined in her monologue:

You guys, on my show, self image is really important to me. We're going to be talking about women's self image. And we're gonna have fun. We're gonna have your favorite celebrities on here talkin' about their projects and I'ma be askin' 'em personal stuff, too. Not just, you know, work stuff. And, of course, I've been a model for a long time, so we're gonna do some makeovers and have fashion like you have never seen before on daytime, 'cause that is my specialty. And of course, you guys, for all the women, we're gonna have a lot of stuff about relationships, 'cause, child, I been cheated on, I been lied to, I been a snooper lookin' through his drawers like, "I know you cheatin'." So we're going to be doing a lot of shows like that, too.

President Bush was very happy with himself today as he told reporters that he had pre-signed emergency declarations in anticipation of the big storm coming.

Bush: "Which is by the way, extraordinary."

Video WMP

Video QT

Bush: "Most emergencies- the President signs after the storm has hits"

Judging from the blistering analyses in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere these past few days, it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don't emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies -- the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department -- has failed a big test.

The President is apparently working overtime to make up for that longish holiday in Crawford. He's working so hard that he just can't be bothered with things like the head of FEMA resigning. Doesn't know anything about it. Hell, he barely knows the guy.

Why, you ask? So millions of weird ashtray collectors can call each other immediately when they see a rare, near mint snoopy acrylic for sale in Illinois. It will also allow these selfsame weird ashtray collectors to stalk each other, thereby turning eBay into the world’s largest flea market/speed dating site. Expect a massive rise in the number of reflected images of some fat guy’s junk in the headstock of a 1969 Les Paul.

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's visit to Reliant Park this morning offered him a glimpse of what it's like to be living in shelter.The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"

Other fun activities Tom Delay should try. *starving, *freezing, *drowning, *crying,*toxic burning, *sexually assualted, *being homeless, * looking for lost family members...

Have they NO shame???? Unbelievable!!

Rather than fight a lawsuit by CNN, the federal government abandoned its effort Saturday to prevent the media from reporting on the recovery of the dead in New Orleans.

Joint Task Force Katrina "has no plans to bar, impede or prevent news media from their news gathering and reporting activities in connection with the deceased Hurricane Katrina victim recovery efforts," said Col. Christian E. deGraff, representing the task force.

U.S. District Court Judge Keith Ellison issued a temporary restraining order Friday against a "zero access" policy announced earlier in the day by Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who is overseeing the federal relief effort in the city, and Terry Ebbert, the city's homeland security director.

14. Men are inherently lazy/slobbish; women are the reverse.

15. Chocolate, however, will cause women to immediately fall into the languor of the opium eater.

A trio of Duke University sophomores say they drove to New Orleans late last week, posed as journalists to slip inside the hurricane-soaked city twice, and evacuated seven people who weren't receiving help from authorities.

[...]

"We found it absolutely incredible that the authorities had no way to get there for four or five days, that they didn't go in and help these people, and we made it in a two-wheel-drive Hyundai," said Hans Buder, who made the trip with his roommate Byrd and another student, David Hankla.

Bush's use of firefighters as human props doesn't win the "most fucked up" prize because it was the most costly for the nation -- the Iraq War wins hands down. It doesn't win because it caused the most deaths, or damaged the reputation of the U.S. the most, or harmed national security by outing undercover CIA agents. In the greater scheme of things, this may seem as small fry compared to the long stream of serious failures in this White House.

It's the most fucked up because it is easily the most crassly political act ever taken by this administration. Bush is so thoroughly a PR vessel that he can't even tour a disaster zone without his human backdrop. He's been a PR marionette for so long -- clear brush for the cameras! -- that he's become thoroughly incapable of keeping it real. God forbid he try to connect with people, get a better understanding of their efforts to cope with real disaster. That's not worth his time. Nope, it's got to be turned into a frickin' Bush campaign commercial. Everything is political. Everything.

The Newseum has over 400 frontpages archived but we suspect that the one with the "New Orleans Dodged The Bullet" hed exists primarily in Chertoff's mind. Hurricane Katrina [Newseum]

Mr. Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever by a president during a dire national emergency. What we witnessed, as clearly as the overwhelming agony of the city of New Orleans, was the dangerous incompetence and the staggering indifference to human suffering of the president and his administration.

And it is this incompetence and indifference to suffering (yes, the carnage continues to mount in Iraq) that makes it so hard to be optimistic about the prospects for the United States over the next few years. At a time when effective, innovative leadership is desperately needed to cope with matters of war and peace, terrorism and domestic security, the economic imperatives of globalization and the rising competition for oil, the United States is being led by a man who seems oblivious to the reality of his awesome responsibilities.

Like a boy being prepped for a second crack at a failed exam, Mr. Bush has been meeting with his handlers to see what steps can be taken to minimize the political fallout from this latest demonstration of his ineptitude. But this is not about politics. It's about competence. And when the president is so obviously clueless about matters so obviously important, it means that the rest of us, like the people left stranded in New Orleans, are in deep, deep trouble.

I like how you phrased that.. someone please mod the parent up, but I would just forego the "blue ray player" functionality and use it for gaming. Of course, if they try to make me connect to the net to start a game I'll tell them where to stick their console.. along with several large pineapples.

Bush's belated and brief visit to the areas hit by Katrina may also have been bogus. In an open letter to Bush, Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu questions why the equipment to repair levee damage that had been so plentiful when the President arrived, wasn't there the next day:

Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment.

And German television crew claims to have witnessed clean-up crews show up specifically to be photographed with Bush in Biloxi. Of course, they're German, so who knows:

All of a sudden the rescue troops finally showed up, the clean-up vehicles; we didn't see those over the last days here. In an area where it really isn't urgent, there is nobody around, all the remaining people went to the city center.

Of all of the websites tracking the Katrina disaster, surely one of the most remarkable is Scipionus.com.

Visitors swoop down over a map of the Gulf Coast that's awash in hundreds of red teardrops, each denoting information about specific geographical points in the area. That's pretty amazing in itself, but there's more: All of the information on the map has been provided by ordinary citizens, most of whom presumably have come to the site in search of information on the flood themselves.

Since Scipionus.com launched Wednesday, it has become a giant visual "wiki" page, attracting tens of thousands of visitors who are collaborating in creating a public document of astonishing detail. "Corner of 1077 and Brewster. Had contact with parents. Lots fo trees down, but no water damage. No electrucity and no phone at the monebt 8/31 2:00pm," reads one of hundreds of entries.

The site is the brainchild of Jonathan Mendez, a 24-year-old computer programmer living in Austin, Texas. Mendez says he grew frustrated combing message boards trying to find out if his family home -- the one his parents and brother had just fled from -- had been destroyed.

Mendez turned to his co-worker, Greg Stoll, a 23-year-old software engineer who had experimented with Google Maps' API, and asked him to code a way for people to report and find damage assessments on a Google Map.

They arrived just shortly before lawmakers in Washington approved $10.5 billion in emergency funding for the relief effort. The House passed the bill on a voice vote. The Senate had done so Thursday night. President Bush, who sought the funds for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said it was a down payment on the total federal effort to rebuild the Gulf Coast, and congressional leaders promised that more money would be approved when they return in force to Washington from their summer holiday.

George Bush arrived last night in the ravaged Gulf coast region amid mounting criticism of his handling of the crisis and a prediction by one senator that the death toll in Louisiana alone could top 10,000 people.

As thousands of people sat on the streets of New Orleans, having spent their fourth day waiting to be rescued, the city fell deeper into chaos, with gangs roaming the city and corpses rotting in the sun.

Kathleen Blanco, the Democrat governor of Louisiana, threatened looters with a shoot-to-kill policy.

"These troops are battle-tested. They have M16s and are locked and loaded," she said. "These troops know how to shoot and kill and I expect they will."

[A]t a fundamental level, our faith in our country is being shaken. Not our faith in the quality of the American people - who have, as in the aftermath of previous disasters, shown themselves to be incredibly generous, concerned, and good-hearted - but our faith in America's ability to take care of itself and to cope with major disaster.

We trust our government to be able to take care of us in a crisis; indeed, that's perhaps the most fundamental reason we form governments. Even I, counting myself among the Bush administration's most cynical critics, expected the federal government to be able to handle this disaster.

It is not able. It was not prepared. As an ever-growing pile of evidence is making clear, in the years before the disaster, the government ignored warnings, dismissed science, cut funding, transferred state resources to foreign adventures, and gave corporate America license to destroy New Orleans' fragile protective ecosystem. When the disaster was looming, it failed to mobilize in advance and failed to facilitate the evacuation of the needy and vulnerable, while our leader stayed obliviously on vacation. When the disaster struck, there was no infrastructure in place to manage it: the National Guard - whether because of Iraq or lack of planning or both - was not there; FEMA was not there. And in the aftermath, as reports from survivors and reporters on the scene paint a bleak picture of a region in chaos, every Washington official from the President and the head of FEMA on down has blithely insisted that everything is fine, help is on the way, and people are being taken care of.

The disconnect between reality and our leaders' rhetoric is painfully, shockingly clear to everyone in America. It is tragic, it is embarassing, it is unforgivable.

Cooper: "Does the federal government bear responsibility for what is happening now? Should they apologize for what is happening now?"

Landrieu: "Anderson, there will be plenty of time to discuss all of those issues, about why and how and what and if, but Anderson, as you understand, and all of the producers and directors at CNN and the news networks, this situation is very serious and it's going to demand all of our full attention through the hours, through the night, through the day. Let me just say a few things... I thank President Clinton and former President Bush for their strong statements of support and comfort today. I thank all the leaders that are coming to Louisiana, and Mississippi, and Alabama to our help and rescue. We are grateful for the military assets that are being brought to bear. I want to thank Senator Frist and Senator Reed for their extraordinary efforts, Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heard, maybe you all have announced it, but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating..."

Cooper: "Excuse me, Senator, sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard that, because for the last four days I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi, and to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other... You know, I gotta tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated, and when they hear politicians, you know, thanking one another, it just kind of cuts them the wrong way right now. Because literally, there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours and there's not enough facilities to take her up. Do you get the anger that is out here?"

[T]his is the time for politics, none better, because I can tell you just from being out of NY a few days that a lot of people in this country are shocked and sobered by New Orleans, but they're also worried and pissed off. They're making the connection between the money, manpower, and resources expended in Iraq and how raggedy-ass the rescue effort has been in the Gulf. If you don't say it now when people's nerves are raw and they're paying full attention, it'll be too late once the waters receded and the media-emoting "healing process" begins.

The head of New Orleans' emergency operations blasted the federal government and FEMA for its slow response. The official Terry Ebbert said "This is a national emergency. This is a national disgrace." Ebbert went on to say "FEMA has been here three days, yet there is no command and control. We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans." Ebbert said "It's criminal within the confines of the United States that within one hour of the hurricane they weren't force-feeding us. It's like FEMA has never been to a hurricane."

What the fuck is going on down there?

You mean to tell me the United States cannot get it together to save these people, feed these people, and have some semblance of law and order?

A South African inventor unveiled a new anti-rape female condom on Wednesday that hooks onto an attacker's penis and aims to cut one of the highest rates of sexual assault in the world.

"Nothing has ever been done to help a woman so that she does not get raped and I thought it was high time," Sonette Ehlers, 57, said of the "rapex," a device worn like a tampon that has sparked controversy in a country used to daily reports of violent crime.

Police statistics show more than 50,000 rapes are reported every year, while experts say the real figure could be four times that as they say most rapes of acquaintances or children are never reported.

Ehlers said the "rapex" hooks onto the rapist's skin, allowing the victim time to escape and helping to identify perpetrators.

"He will obviously be too pre-occupied at this stage," she told reporters in Kleinmond, a small holiday village about 100km (60 miles) east of Cape Town. "I promise you he is going to be too sore. He will go straight to hospital."

The device, made of latex and held firm by shafts of sharp barbs, can only be removed from the man through surgery which will alert hospital staff, and ultimately, the police, she said.

Storm victims were raped and beaten, fights and fires broke out, corpses lay out in the open, and rescue helicopters and law enforcement officers were shot at as flooded-out New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday. "This is a desperate SOS," the mayor said.

Anger mounted across the ruined city, with thousands of storm victims increasingly hungry, desperate and tired of waiting for buses to take them out. [...]

A military helicopter tried to land at the convention center several times to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away.

National Guardsmen poured in to help restore order and put a stop to the looting, carjackings and gunfire that have gripped New Orleans in the days since Hurricane Katrina plunged much of the city under water.

In a statement to CNN, Nagin said: "This is a desperate SOS. Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don't anticipate enough buses. We need buses. Currently the convention center is unsanitary and unsafe and we're running out of supplies." [...]

"Hospitals are trying to evacuate," said Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan, spokesman at the city emergency operations center. "At every one of them, there are reports that as the helicopters come in people are shooting at them. There are people just taking potshots at police and at helicopters, telling them, 'You better come get my family.'"