I'm not exactly sure why, but Happy Halloween none the less.

Alexis and I got back from the Imogen Heap show at Canal Room in NYC a couple hours ago and we are still completely blown away. This was the last stop on her tour (WAIT! Immi said she'll be performing at The Living Room on Friday!) around the United States promoting her new album, Speak for Yourself. Immi fans will know that it's been out for a while in the UK and probably already have a copy (mine's signed!) but now you can get it for like 10 bucks from Amazon starting Tuesday. Anyway, about the show:

The bartenders were very nice and the drinks were very good. I had a couple Tanqueray and tonics after a Bud Light that was but two dollars cheaper, and Alexis had a couple Stoli Raspberry and Sprites. Now, on with the really important stuff.

The opening band, I can't remember the name, was OK, but they need to learn to play more than chords on guitars. That said, they weren't awful. But they kind of were after eight songs.

After a brief (20 minute) wait, Immi finally came on and completely tore the place apart piano stylee. The entire crowd of around 400 was enthralled (one could literally hear a whisper) with her piano and vocal renditions of electronic thrashers from her new album. She also performed a lot electronically but with new arrangements featuring live sampling, looping, and the playing of a new peculiar plucking instrument she picked up in San Diego. Acoustic bits would be followed immediately by heavy electronic beats for the chorus, then back to tiny sounds with sweet vocals. She even threw in a few tunes from her first album, I Megaphone, and played "Breathe In" (from her work with Guy Sigsworth as Frou Frou) as an encore.

The best part (that could have been the worst part) was when I slid a CD of remixes I've done for her across the floor and, rather than landing near her slippers, it bounced off the mic stand and landed near the spare water bottle! Alexis and I devised a plan. At the end of the show, during the ear-shattering applause, somehow she heard us yell "Immi! The CD!" and looked our way, we pointed, she picked up the disc (on which I have spent dozens of days) and as she left the stage for the final time, she was carrying her two white fluffy slippers and my CD of remixes.

Awesome.








































My dad helpfully sent over this news of the 64-year-old tradition of putting inmates on wild animals in front of 6,000 people for the public's delight and financial gain. Doesn't sound very much like America to me. At least, not the America I want.

To make matters more concerning, all the inmates mentioned in the article are non-violent drug offenders. These aren't baby-killers or carjackers being thrown into an arena with a bull (which I would still have a problem with), they're the drug dealers who used to live around the corner and now, for the next 20 years, will be living with Big Earl and Jimbo without a tube of Astroglyde in sight.
The Outlaw Rodeo, billed as the “World’s Largest Behind the Walls,” is a big draw in these eastern Oklahoma hills, with 12,000 people expected Friday and Saturday nights. Professionals also compete in the sanctioned event, but boosters say it’s the thrill of being inside a prison arena with convicted felons that brings the crowd.
Story continues below ↓ advertisement

Inmate teams made up of 10 or so members come from 10 state prisons. When Barcus signed up, he was looking for a break from the Jackie Brannon Correctional Center, where he’s serving time for violating probation by taking marijuana into a county jail.

He learned this week he wouldn’t be an alternate but a competitor.

“It’s scary,” said the wiry 26-year-old who grew up in southern Oklahoma’s rodeo country.

[...]

Most of the inmates don’t get the chance to practice on live animals, and the barrel is a poor substitute, said Corey Swanner, one of five inmates on this team who claims some riding experience “out in the world.”

The big difference: “The bull,” he said, “is looking to kill you.”





This summer, Sony dropped 250,000 superballs down a street in San Francisco. This is the commercial that was created from that. Photos at Flickr.

The list is in! According to almost 133,000 people who voted this year, Paul Van Dyk is the No. 1 DJ in the world for 2005. He's a great guy and makes quite popular tunes, plus he has a really good publicist. Congratulations, Paul!

Check out the rest of the list on the DJ Mag site.



Simpsons creator Matt Groening prepared a mix for The Breezeblock on Radio 1! That is a combination I never would have guessed. Tracks include tunes from The Boredoms, Frank Zappa, Nick Cave, and Electrelane. Very nice.



Miers may not have ever been serious about the Supreme Court spot. The Republicans (and this seems very plausible) may have been sacrificing her.

Tinfoil hats on.



Gas prices have been pretty high, right? It looks like all that extra money has found a home.

Exxon reported their biggest profits ever today. In fact, they're the biggest profits of any American company since the country was founded.
US oil giant Exxon Mobil has posted a quarterly profit of $9.9bn (£5.55bn), the largest in US corporate history, on the back of record oil and gas prices.

Profit was up 75% and revenue rose 32% to more than $100bn.

But the results were short of analyst forecasts due to production damage from Hurricanes Rita and Katrina, and lower profit at its chemicals division.

Exxon's record earnings were revealed on the day Royal Dutch Shell said it made $9bn net profit in the quarter [up 68% since last year].



Last night we kind of thought our factory smelled like maple syrup. Was it all of New York City?
An unseen, sweet-smelling cloud drifted through parts of Manhattan last night. Arturo Padilla walked through it and declared that it was awesome.

"It's like maple syrup. With Eggos. Or pancakes," he said. "It's pleasant."

[...]

"We are continuing to sample the air throughout the affected area to make sure there's nothing hazardous," said Jarrod Bernstein, an emergency management spokesman. "What the actual cause of the smell is, we really don't know."



With the growing grayness of the Winter season outside, we were getting a little bored with the grey background on the site that takes up most of our time, so to uniquely celebrate the holidays and the joy, brightness, and love they stand for, and to contrast with the gross coldness and lack of sunlight in the world that now surrounds us U.S. citizens, Wider Angle is instituting a new background scheme.

The backgrounds will now be extensions of everyday life. Literally. Beautiful, colorful photos taken from the world around us will be single-pixelized and repeated as backgrounds on Wider Angle for the Winter season to brighten the spirit despite the cold and the administration. And if you live in the south where it's warm already, well, first of all thanks for reading Wider Angle. Second, now the color scheme will match your surroundings finally.

Like it? Hate it? Completely ambivalent? Leave a comment or don't!



We're all looking forward to Fitzmas tomorrow, when the indictments fall raining from the heavens and land on only those deserving enough to have committed treason. But the DCeiver, subbing for Wonkette, makes a valid point:
[T]ake our advice: when this thing climaxes, don't linger too long. With Rove, the devil is always in the denouement.
It couldn't be more true. This shit better not leave the headlines or we're toast and they're free. As a country we need to keep on this. I would guess only 20-22% of the country reads Wider Angle, so please, tell your friends who may not be fully aware of the worse-than-Watergate shit that's going down in the government we work for, pay for, and depend on.



Al Franken was on The Daily Show last night to promote his new book: The Truth (with Jokes). Crooks and Liars has Quicktime and Windows Media.



According to a study published by Harm Reduction Journal, pot isn't likely to cause lung cancer as cigarettes so famously do. Why?

Whereas nicotine has several effects that promote lung and other types of cancer, THC acts in ways that counter the cancer-causing chemicals in marijuana smoke, Melamede explained in an interview with Reuters Health.

"THC turns down the carcinogenic potential," he said.

For example, lab research indicates that nicotine activates a body enzyme that converts certain chemicals in both tobacco and marijuana smoke into cancer-promoting form. In contrast, studies in mice suggest that THC blocks this enzyme activity.

Another key difference, Melamede said, is in the immune system effects of tobacco and marijuana. Smoke sends irritants into the respiratory system that trigger an immune-regulated inflammatory response, which involves the generation of potentially cell-damaging substances called free radicals. These particles are believed to contribute to a range of diseases, including cancer.

But cannabinoids -- both those found in marijuana and the versions found naturally in the body -- have been shown to dial down this inflammatory response, Melamede explained.

So smoke up, boys and girls! But remember: don't smoke pot and cigarettes if you still want to avoid most of the nasties. Nicotine's powers to harm are still far greater than THC's powers to help.






It was very thoughtful of the "well-wisher" to turn his cap around. He's done this before.





Quite an ass, indeed, sirs.



Rupert Murdoch, in a "panic," is buying all the Internet companies he can get his hands on. Apparently My Space, Easynet, and IGN are just the beginning.
"In the last two or three months he has decided to spend or try to spend I think it is about $5bn on internet properties of various sorts," said Sir Martin.

"This was the second attempt by Murdoch and News Corp to penetrate this [market]. He must have been panicking because he even said he might hire [management consultants] McKinsey to help him out with his strategy.

"Why is it that he is so preoccupied with this and willing it appears to make investments almost willy-nilly? I think I can use the word panic - that is probably overdoing it but maybe I am not."
Now is as good a time as ever to recall BugMeNot, as Media Guardian requires registration.



Grandaddy's "Jed's Other Poem" has been turned into a beautiful, touching music video programmed entirely on an Apple ][+ in Applesoft II.



As a user of OpenOffice (because I dislike Microsoft) I've noticed that it runs a bit slow, but I've never done any quantitative tests. I appreciate the open sourciness of it, but I think that's because I use it about once a month.
cygnusx writes "ZDNet's George Ou has been writing a series of posts about Open Office bloat. Includes some interesting system usage comparisons" From the article: "Even when dealing with what is essentially the same data, OpenOffice Calc uses up 211 MBs of private unsharable memory while Excel uses up 34 MBs of private unsharable memory. The fact that OpenOffice.org Calc takes about 100 times the CPU time explains the kind of drastic results we were getting where Excel could open a file in 2 seconds while Calc would take almost 3 minutes. Most of that massive speed difference is due to XML being very processor intensive, but Microsoft still handles its own XML files about 7 times faster than OpenOffice.org handles OpenDocument ODS format and uses far less memory than OpenOffice.org."

A big congratulations to Sheryl Swoopes for being the highest profile athlete to admit she's gay. I think she'll be pleased with how much better her life is going to get.



Just as Rachel Maddow predicted when Bushie answered a question about confidential documents that was never asked at a press conference a few days ago, Harriet Miers is withdrawing her nomination and citing those documents as the reason/excuse. Bravo, Maddow.
President Bush today "reluctantly accepted" Harriet Miers' withdrawal from her nomination to the Supreme Court, according to a statement from the White House. Miers, the White House counsel, said her nomination presented a "burden for the White House." The White House said Miers had to withdraw over concerns that senators wanted documents of privileged discussions between Miers and the president.



None of us were ever meant to see the memo that circulated through Wal-Mart that said in order to cut costs they should hire healthier employees. Most of us know that under the prevailing wage of workers at Wal-Mart, they can't support their families and have health insurance. I guess that's one way to deal with it, but they won't be healthy long without healthcare.

The memo also proposed that employees pay more for their spouses' health insurance, called for cutting the company's 401(k) contributions to 3 percent of wages from 4 percent and for cutting company-paid life insurance policies.

The memo acknowledged that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, had to walk a fine line in restraining benefits because critics attacked it for being stingy on wages and health coverage. Chambers in the memo acknowledged 46 percent of the children of Wal-Mart's 1.33 million United States employees were uninsured or on Medicaid.




Celebrities somehow turn into weird robots that malfunction under sub-optimal conditions.
Justin Timberlake :
Demands the entire floor, private fitness studio, extra-large stereo unit and, since like Eminem he's undoubtedly a voracious reader, Nintendo [sic] PlayStation.

Quoting the booklet exactly: "The floor's air conditioning filters must be changed on his arrival. He insists all door handles be disinfected every few hours." And, since the man obviously worships with The Barbra Streisand Bible, "the hotel staff may under no circumstances address him."



If there's one thing I dislike about sidewalk seating it's wobbly tables. Behold:
The point is, when you get stuck with a wobbly table, is there any way to un-wobble-ify it? Most people attempt to stick a matchbook or piece of napkin underneath the leg. But André Martin, a physicist at CERN, would use a different trick: He'd rotate the table, working under the assumption that the legs were all the same length and that ground would eventually yield up four areas at the same level -- producing a perfectly stable table. He's always able to find a good orientation. That got him wondering: Could he mathematically prove his technique will always work?




Not being a cable subscriber, I am pleased that Comedy Central will be launching a new broadband channel, MotherLoad, on November 1.

Initially the site called MotherLoad will have five distinct channels and offer more than 450 video clips, with roughly 50 to 80 new clips added per week. The site will include short three-minute clips from original Comedy Central shows, including "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report."

It will also offer original content developed especially for the Web site. This will include titles such as "I Love the Thirties," "Odd Todd" and "Meet the Creeps." Each weekday, comedian Greg Giraldo, host of the network's "Friday Night with Greg Giraldo," will anchor a one-minute roundup of what's new on the site.






Today saw the 2,000th American soldier dead in Iraq.

Despite the mounting death toll and the growing public dissatisfaction with the war, Bush said that the United States is making steady progress by killing enemy fighters, training Iraqi troops and guiding Iraq toward democracy. He cautioned that ultimate victory in Iraq -- which he called the central front in the global war on terrorism -- will come only with patience, determination and continued sacrifice.

"This war will require more sacrifice, more time and more resolve," he said in a speech hosted by military spouses at Bolling Air Force Base. "No one should underestimate the difficulties ahead, nor should they overlook the advantages we bring to this fight."




Google to offer a database service. They really do want everyone's information.

Rumors surrounding this service have been spreading over the past few days, and a handful of people have managed to catch the site when it's up (it's currently down) [WA: www.googlebase.com goes to Google]. It is not known when Google will officially launch the service, although they are holding a special invitation-only event today. Here's the text off of the front page of the site:

Google Base is Google's database into which you can add all types of content. We'll host your content and make it searchable online for free.

Examples of items you can find in Google Base:

• Description of your party planning service
• Articles on current events from your website
• Listing of your used car for sale
• Database of protein structures

You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they search Google Base. In fact, based on the relevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle and Google Local.




Wait... what?
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., Japans top telephone company, says it is developing the technology to perhaps make video games more realistic. But more sinister applications also come to mind.

I can envision it being added to militaries' arsenals of so-called "non-lethal" weapons
Me too.

The phenomenon is painless but dramatic. Your feet start to move before you know it. I could even remote-control myself by taking the switch into my own hands.

There's no proven-beyond-a-doubt explanation yet as to why people start veering when electricity hits their ear. But NTT researchers say they were able to make a person walk along a route in the shape of a giant pretzel using this technique.

It's a mesmerizing sensation similar to being drunk or melting into sleep under the influence of anesthesia. But it's more definitive, as though an invisible hand were reaching inside your brain.

NTT says the feature may be used in video games and amusement park rides, although there are no plans so far for a commercial product.

I'll stick with the teacup ride, thank you.




Cheney leaked Plame's name, and with all the whining and yelling Bush has been doing, it doesn't seem like he knew. In fact, it looks like the president's isolation caused all his top handlers to lie to him, and now he's mad, confused, and throwing poo at Laura.



Democrats are preparing for the 2006 elections with new slogans. The nominees are...

Together, We Can Do Better

Together, America Can Do Better
I'd like to propose a couple alternatives for them to consider:
"Jesus Fucking Christ Will Someone Introduce the Democrats to Marketers with Brains or Balls?"
Or:
"How About Democrats Fire All the Student-Body-President Dimwits Running Things Over There and Start Acting as Though This Nation Is in The Crisis Everyone but Them Seems To Recognize?"
With shorter versions for bumper stickers, of course.



Any Starbucks is supposed to serve you a cup of fair trade coffee if you ask for it. If you're a Starbucks lover (really?) or just interested in their practices, check out the Starbucks Challenge, and report back if you participate.



Rosa Parks probably never planned on being the Civil Roghts icon she is today, but nevertheless, she leaves quite the legacy behind her.

Her act of civil disobedience, what seems a simple gesture of defiance so many years later, was in fact a dangerous, even reckless move in 1950's Alabama. In refusing to move, she risked legal sanction and perhaps even physical harm, but she also set into motion something far beyond the control of the city authorities. Mrs. Parks clarified for people far beyond Montgomery the cruelty and humiliation inherent in the laws and customs of segregation.

Here's to you, Mrs. Parks.



W's lawyers wrote to the Onion demanding that they stop using the presidential seal in their paper and on the website. The Onion replied asking for tax breaks for satirists.

The newspaper regularly produces a parody of President Bush's weekly radio address on its Web site (www.theonion.com/content/node/40121), where it has a picture of President Bush and the official insignia.

"It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site," Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28. (At the time, Mr. Dixton's office was also helping Mr. Bush find a Supreme Court nominee; days later his boss, Harriet E. Miers, was nominated.)






Now you can create a virtual you online, dress him or her in Gap clothes, and strip for yourself.

Crispin Porter & Bogusy, the same team that brought us Burger King's Subserviant Chicken, has just launched Watch Me Change.



Be on the lookout for these fine brews if you encounter them in a pub. Cheers!



Jonathan Larsen on New York magazine's recent article on whether Jews are smarter than, one supposes, everyone else on earth. The answer is obviously no, but the way Jews value education and knowledge, incorporate it into who gets laid, and thus increase the average brainpower of the people could be a lesson to America.
The political component of this is not the standard PC argument about whether discussing genetics is racist. The political component of this is patriotism. Every day we as a nation make choices about what kind of behavior to reward and to celebrate. Right now, we seem to have elevated dysfunctional stupidity -- of the supposedly "moral" religious variety and of the supposedly immoral celebreality variety -- as the quickest route to fame. We have also embraced (well, not recently, but you know what I mean) a president who openly denigrates the value of education. In doing so, we tell our males that they can gain esteem, status and power by acting like idiots. We discourage females from seeking intelligent, educated males and encourage them to seek the idiots: Those likely to reap society's rewards of status, wealth and power.

If we continue this trend, for generation after generation, what will we turn America into? We saw a preview of it in a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution article that tracked the correlation between institutional southern ignorance and the social price paid. We're already starting to lose ground to other cultures -- Indian, Asian, European -- that value intelligence more than we do. Their economies and lifestyles and achievements increasingly rival, and sometimes surpass, our own.

Every time we make a choice about what we value, every time we buy something, praise something, ridicule something, discuss something, we're choosing either to help strengthen our country or to weaken it.



A rookie designer didn't know what Guernica was about, so this ad happened. New Yorkerlarity ensued.



Remember when Jessie took too many caffeine pills? She was soooo excited. Link on!



Here's what's been on the Wider Angle system lately:

The Go! Team [Thunder Lightning Strike] - Loud, energetic rock that's been on the scene for a while but still rocks the headphones.

Danger Doom [The Mouse and The Mask] - MC Doom with Danger Mouse and Adult Swim. What?

Boards of Canada [The Campfire Headphase] - Brand new album from a master of chill.

Emiliana Torrini [Fisherman's Woman] - Beautiful, acoustic, bliss.

Sufjan Stevens [Illinois] - Months on and still a daily listen. Also check out Greetings from Michigan and Seven Swans.

Royksopp [The Understanding] - Funky and fresh.



The FCC, utilizing a 1994 wire-tapping law, is demanding that libraries, universities, airports, and commercial Internet providers all make their systems easy to monitor by spring 2007. This would cost universities alone over $7 BILLION and would edge us ever closer to that Orwellian vision the Neocons love so well.

"This is the mother of all unfunded mandates," Mr. Hartle said.

Even the lowest estimates of compliance costs would, on average, increase annual tuition at most American universities by some $450, at a time when rising education costs are already a sore point with parents and members of Congress, Mr. Hartle said.

At New York University, for instance, the order would require the installation of thousands of new devices in more than 100 buildings around Manhattan, be they small switches in a wiring closet or large aggregation routers that pull data together from many sites and send it over the Internet, said Doug Carlson, the university's executive director of communications and computing services.

"Back of the envelope, this would cost us many millions of dollars," Mr. Carlson said.




I'm not sure when Fox News came out of the right-wing closet, but they're SO out now that they should have their own television network.

Oh.
I just had to call Fox News. Their hold music is actually George Bush giving a speech about Ronald Reagan. He tells all these boring anecdotes about Nancy writing on Air Force One stationary, etc. What blatant asslicking…I feel slightly dirty right now!
212-301-3000.





The organizations obviously don't need logos. People already remember them -- that's why they're there. But some may forget about the2ndFLOOR, or worse yet, not even bother going up there.

Ladies and gentlemen, the mug shot you've all been waiting for.



(Original at The Smoking Gun)



Suck.com created a startlingly prescient pitch for Wordprocessor.com in 1996.
Don't shell out bucks for a shrink-wrapped letter-cruncher; edit on the web, free of
charge - in exchange for a little product placement.

Some other links to great performances on KCRW: Frou Frou, Rilo Kiley, Radiohead, Flaming Lips, Sigur Ros.

Next Wednesday, Imogen Heap will be doing a set.



Followers of Sufjan Stevens know how the press for Illinoise has been unbelievable, which is the focus of this post on Plastic, but it also links to a 40-minute performance on KCRW's Morning Becomes Eclectic that is spine-tingling.

You won't be seeing the little New York Press icon here on WA anymore, and that's sad to me.

When I first moved to New York, I picked up the NYP every Tuesday (then Wednesday) to read the columns, crime blotter, reviews, and political stories. Now it's gotten so thin that you can see through it if potato chips even get near it. They fired some of their best columnists, the paper itself is half hooker ads, and they did away with my beloved silly crime blotter.

They've moved on to insulting innocent victims of tragic events because, apparently, they have nothing better to do.
We noticed when the Post originally reported that Kim had been with 17-year-old Jennifer Hare when he made his dive into the Hudson. Now we find out that the 22-year-old had a former girlfriend who was also 17. Exactly how former of a girlfriend was Nowak? Was Kim so lame that he was actually dating a 16-year-old back when he was twenty-one?

If we had a notebook full of our romantic writings about underage girls, we would also go to extremes to keep it in our possession. If we lost that notebook, we'd probably throw ourselves into the Hudson just to be spared the embarrassment.

There are enough lousy poets in this city that we never felt obliged to regret the loss of Kim's future work. Now we're not so sure we even care about some dead creep who couldn't do better than using his verse to score with high-school girls. Still, it's too bad we didn't know about Kim back when we were assigning those articles on Lolita.

Goodbye, New York Press. The cynicism was fun at first, but it turned sour, then bitter, and now rancid. Cleaning the Tupperware is no longer an option; the whole thing's gotta go in the trash.



According to a newly released email, Michael Brown was too busy eating dinner to, you know, help millions of people with their hurricane thing.

C&L has Quicktime and Windows Media of the report on Keith Olbermann's show.


Martha gets wild on her show. The title will not appear on your bill.



An author is having a bit of a scuffle with her publisher, Simon & Schuster, about their lawsuit against Google Print. She wants her book to be included to help people find it, while they want no books included because people could, wait for it, infringe on the copyrights.

Someone asked me recently, "Meghann, how can you say you don't mind people reading parts of your book for free? What if someone xeroxed your book and was handing it out for free on street corners?"

I replied, "Well, it seems to be working for Jesus."

Not to mention that...
I fail to see what the harm is in Google indexing a book and helping people find it. Anyone can read my book for free by going to the library anyway.
Her book is the Field Guide to the Apocalypse, if you're interested in taking a look.



Evolutionary developmental biology, or some combination of it and our current theories, I think could be a significant step toward further understanding evolution. I've wondered for a long time why we mammals have eyes in the same place on our heads, have two of them, and even tiny small-brained animals know where a human's eyes are.
Given that nearly all our cells carry the same DNA, you might wonder why your eyes look different from your pancreas. The main reason is that genes don’t necessarily make their proteins in every cell. Instead, a particular gene in a particular cell might or might not be “expressed” (that is, switched on, and so making its protein). Part of the reason that your pancreas differs from your eye is that the insulin gene, among others, is expressed only in your pancreas and not in your eye. How particular genes get switched on or off plays an important part in the evo-devo story.






Will Vice Sleazeball Cheney resign in shame and deputy nut job Condi replace him? Will worst-president-ever George lose it without turdblossom Rove and start speaking without his fake Texan accent?

Find out next time on... our federal government.




The Wider Angle/Pi Factory crew pays $60/month for a reliable 3.0mbps connection in New York City from Time Warner Cable, the second largest media company in the world. With the intense saturation, the price should be lower, or they should use that money to bring broadband access to people in more rural areas. And it might be nice to deal with someone a little more non-megacorpotron when we call for help.
Tenken writes "Salon has an article about the state of broadband in America. After seeing what many other countries have accomplished with their broadband markets, namely Japan, Korea, and (gasp) even Canada, the current state of affairs in the U.S. is looking pretty dismal. I'm sure I'm not the only one tired of paying $45 a month just for cable internet." From the article: "Across the globe, it's the same story. In France, DSL service that is 10 times faster than the typical United States connection; 100 TV channels and unlimited telephone service cost only $38 per month. In South Korea, super-fast connections are common for less than $30 per month. Places as diverse as Finland, Canada and Hong Kong all have much faster Internet connections at a lower cost than what is available here. In fact, since 2001, the U.S. has slipped from fourth to 16th in the world in broadband use per capita. While other countries are taking advantage of the technological, business and education opportunities of the broadband era, America remains lost in transition."


BBC interactive is excellent, but I'm excited that Upcoming is going to get even better.



Tom Vanderbilt on Intelligent Design and the Designer.



Reconstructing the 1918 flu was dangerous enough, but we didn't want it to fall into the wrong hands. So... the Department of Health and Human Services (a misnomer if there ever was one) published the genome.

Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy:

This is extremely foolish. The genome is essentially the design of a weapon of mass destruction. No responsible scientist would advocate publishing precise designs for an atomic bomb, and in two ways revealing the sequence for the flu virus is even more dangerous.

First, it would be easier to create and release this highly destructive virus from the genetic data than it would be to build and detonate an atomic bomb given only its design, as you don't need rare raw materials like plutonium or enriched uranium. Synthesizing the virus from scratch would be difficult, but far from impossible. An easier approach would be to modify a conventional flu virus with the eight unique and now published genes of the 1918 killer virus.

Second, release of the virus would be far worse than an atomic bomb. Analyses have shown that the detonation of an atomic bomb in an American city could kill as many as one million people. Release of a highly communicable and deadly biological virus could kill tens of millions, with some estimates in the hundreds of millions.

UN FUCKING BELIEVABLE.





This 200-foot long bunny was created by Gelatin. I'm upset I didn't create it first. I can only imagine the glee a weary hiker would succumb to upon discovering this fuzzy friend. (Note the splayed organs beside the bunny.)


The bunny is 200 feet long -- a toy rabbit "knitted by dozens of grannies out of pink wool". The toy is expected to stay there, on the side of this 5,000 foot high mountain (Colletto Fava in northern Italy's Piedmont region) for 20 years, until 2025.





Common Desk is an amazing piece by Belief. It's part reel, part PSA, part movie. And at 40 minutes, it still leaves you wanting more. Seventeen stars.



It keeps getting weirder.
Two lobbying groups, chosen by Louisiana to collect emergency requests from hospitals and nursing homes during Hurricane Katrina, found themselves instead scrambling to arrange private rescues when government teams became preoccupied with plucking citizens off rooftops.

[...]

Some are now asking why lobbyists, instead of emergency experts, were left to devise life-and-death solutions by patching together church and tour buses, private ambulances and religious volunteers.



It looks like it's going to be very hard for Pixar to break off its deal with Disney. With the sequals in Disney's hands, Pixar could end up competing with itself.
Jobs has only three choices if he wants a distributor with the global clout that comes close to Disney's—Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros. But in the 20 months that have elapsed since he fired his parting shot at Eisner, Jobs has not been able to make a suitable deal with any of these studios. The reason is not that the studios lack appreciation for the creative genius of Pixar and its pioneering work in computer graphics, but that any new Pixar films would face a potentially awesome competitor: Pixar sequels.






The undeniably cool Pez MP3 player.


A battle has erupted over who governs the internet, with America demanding to maintain a key role in the network it helped create and other countries demanding more control.

The European commission is warning that if a deal cannot be reached at a meeting in Tunisia next month the internet will split apart.

At issue is the role of the US government in overseeing the internet's address structure, called the domain name system (DNS), which enables communication between the world's computers. It is managed by the California-based, not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) under contract to the US department of commerce.

A meeting of officials in Geneva last month was meant to formulate a way of sharing internet governance which politicians could unveil at the UN-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis on November 16-18. A European Union plan that goes a long way to meeting the demands of developing countries to make the governance more open collapsed in the face of US opposition.

Viviane Reding, European IT commissioner, says that if a multilateral approach cannot be agreed, countries such as China, Russia, Brazil and some Arab states could start operating their own versions of the internet and the ubiquity that has made it such a success will disappear.





Real Time with Bill Maher developed this very clever commercial for the BushCheney empire.



Breathtaking work from Pinthin. (Their US Open on USA stuff is enthralling.)





Tag: cameratoss. (via kottke)

If you've heard Shut Up, You Fucking Baby! or seen Let America Laugh, you'll be very familiar with this guy. I think David Cross will cream him in court.
Thomas Weber, former manager of the Nashville, Tennessee venue Exit-In, filed a federal complaint on October 7 against Cross, Sub Pop Records, Time Warner, Warner Music Group, WEA, and Cross's production company, Liberal Jew Run Media Productions, for publishing his visual and vocal likeness without consent on Cross' 2002 CD Shut Up, You Fucking Baby! and 2003 DVD Let America Laugh.

Here's the lowdown: While Liberal Jew Run Media Productions (gee, that will sound great being announced in court) recorded Cross's performance at the Exit-In on May 18, 2002, Weber was allegedly taunted and taped without giving the a-okay. He would thus help Shut Up, You Fucking Baby! on its journey towards a Grammy nomination and a number 18 peak on Billboard's Heatseekers chart.




Be sure to watch the video...
It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution.



There's an iPod with video now. Yay.

I discovered after buying my Dell Axim that watching video on a tiny screen makes me a little sick. I can't watch over a half hour without needing to focus on something else for a long time. So take that as you will.

A cool thing about this is Apple making a deal with ABC to offer episodes of their TV shows for $1.99. They'll be encoded and encrypted and DRMtastic, but it's a start. (I'll still take BitTorrent, thanks.) They're also offering music videos for, get this, $1.99! A promotional tool -- an ad -- that you actually pay for. Not only do you pay for it, but it costs as much as a television show. Does that mean that, in the future, magazines will cost $4, but with pretty ads they'll be $10?

Unless it's directed by Michel Gondry, I can play it on my DVD player, and I can rip it onto my computer, no thanks. Ads should be free, if not cheaper.

Hmm. Apple's stock dropped 10% today.

Beef up your body language cues for interviews or one night stands.



That subway threat in New York City was a hoax. Super.



A brilliant conversation between Chip Kidd and Milton Glaser from a few years ago. If you are a designer, you must read this. The whole thing.



I was emailed, IM'd, and told about this story more times today than I can count. In a tragic accident, Aardman Animations, the studio from whence Wallace & Gromit spring, has gone up in flames.
"Everything has gone, from as far back as Morph and all the way through to Chicken Run, including Wallace and Gromit, Creature Comforts, it's all there. Everyone is devastated."

Aardman co-founder Dave Sproxton said one of the most important losses was a complete exhibition of the three Wallace and Gromit short films which was recently brought back to the UK after a tour of Japan.

Mr Sproxton said: "A lot of the original sets were there, including several panels of original storyboards and that, in a way, is the biggest loss. It's basically a ready-to-go exhibition and sadly that's been destroyed."

He added that the films themselves were stored elsewhere and so had not been damaged.

Mr Park, who won Oscars for animations such as The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave, said: "Even though it's precious stuff and nostalgic - and it's dreadful news for the company, in the light of other tragedies it's not a big deal."



WA expresses our best wishes and deepest sympathies to the people devastated by these awful disasters. (Now, about that global climate change...)

The quake Saturday morning:



CNN: More than 850 people were killed [20,000 DEAD] in South and Central Asia and many more injured when a powerful earthquake -- estimated to be the most intense in the region in the last century -- jolted cities in three countries early today. Officials are warning that the death toll could reach the thousands in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.

---

TIME: At mid-morning, an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale struck just west of Kashmir's Line of Control, along which hundreds of thousands of Indian and Pakistani troops face off in bunkers and artillery installations and over which they have fought two wars and countless skirmishes and nearly came to a nuclear confrontation in 2002. An Indian army spokesman told TIME: "Destruction is massive in Uri. It's close to the epicenter. Initial reports are that not many houses are standing." As buildings crumbled, he added, gas pipes ruptured and fires swept the central market in the town just across the Line of Control on the Indian side of Kashmir. Simultaneously, landslides cut off Uri, and much of the surrounding area, from the world and swatted two buses full with passengers into a rocky mountain gorge. Sixteen Indian soldiers were buried alive in a bunker at Uri. The Police Inspector General of Police, Javed Mukhdoomi, had definite information on one town, Dangdar, near Kupwara. "Almost the entire town has been razed," he said. The Indian army spokesman also had his certainties. The final count of dead would be "very high," he said.
And then there's tropical storm Stan that hit on Tuesday (did American media cover this?):


Sky News: Hundreds of people are still missing after Tropical Storm Stan hit Central America and Mexico.

Entire villages have been wiped out and the number of dead has already reached more than 600.

Rescue efforts are being hampered by rain, blocked roads and collapsed bridges.

The death toll in hardest-hit Guatemala has risen to more than 500.

Rescuers discovered 36 bodies in Solola, west of the capital, Guatemala City, President Oscar Berger said.

The storm has also killed 67 in El Salvador, 11 in Nicaragua and 24 in Mexico, authorities in those countries said.

Tens of thousands have been left homeless across the region.

---

Reuters: Rescue teams have pulled 64 bodies from a mudslide that swept over a Guatemalan village in the worst single tragedy caused by flooding that killed more than 240 people in Central America and southern Mexico.

Hundreds of homes in the Maya Indian lakeside town of Santiago Atitlan were swallowed up when a hillside collapsed under heavy rains earlier this week.

Outside emergency teams only reached the town on Friday and locals said they feared hundreds could have perished.

"There are no words for this. I have only tears left," said teacher Manuel Gonzalez, whose school was destroyed.

---

BBC: "There were only houses here, for as far as you could see... It makes you lose hope. There are no children left, there are no people left."



This is a crazy ass, beautifully rendered video of plants that are more than alive, they're almost conscious. Couldn't look any more real if they had filmed it.
Something about these evinces a genuinely atavistic reaction, a whole-body squick. There's nothing overtly gross here, but the net effect makes me go all ooey-gooey.



Justin Frank waxes judicial and fills us in on why Bush really picked Miers, his personal lawyer, for the Supreme Court. If he gets impeached and the court is stacked, he has nothing to worry about.
By appointing his personal lawyer after appointing a Chief Justice who helped him out in the 2000 Florida election, he is "stacking" the court with justices who will protect him and his colleagues at all costs. After all, Miers kept Bush from one particular jury duty which, had he served it, would have exposed his DWI arrest record before he even had a chance to cover it up.

As it stands, the court will protect even more White House secrets than ever, against any and all investigators. After all, Roberts didn't have to release personal memos that had direct bearing on his beliefs. And the old GAO case about the energy scandal remains a big win for White House secrecy. This appointment is insurance: the Harriet Miers policy. No more close votes in Bush's favor. In case there is an impeachment effort Bush will be safe from inquiry by counting on his court (i.e. his lawyers) to protect him.



I posted Annelys de Vet's "The Right to Copy" in my office a while ago and finally decided it was time to do one for myself to reflect my composition. The original was presented as part of a great lecture on the virtues of copying creatively and ignoring modernist notions of originality. I encourage you to write one of these pieces for yourself and post it in the comments.


I am Ben Mautner

I am 2 hours of television a week
I am 11 DVDs a month
I am 524 minutes of telephone every month
I am 112 minutes of VOIP every month
I am 8 text messages a week
I am 80 hours of computer a week
I am 31 blogs a day
I am 4 records a week
I am 18 emails a day
I am 5 magazines a week
I am 15 sources a day
I am 2 nightclubs a month
I am 14 Google Image searches a week
I am 3 DJ mixes a week
I am 2 albums a week
I am 35 hours of radio a month
I am 50 hours of satellite radio a week
I am 4 podcasts
I am 18 playlists
I am 4 torrents a week
I am 4 years of art school
I am 2 magazine subscriptions a year
I am 8 hours of internet a day
I am 6 books a month
I am 4 newspapers a day
I am 1 museum a month
I am 10 years experience

I am what I copy
I copy what I am



Despite conservatives AND liberals both being unhappy about Miers (for very different reasons), Bush insists she will be confirmed for the Supreme Court. But how will that happen if no one knows anything about her?
"She's got to convince the conservative world that she understands the word 'strict constructionist,'" said Sen. Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record), R-S.C., one of three Judiciary Committee conservatives who met Thursday with Miers. "She's going to have to fill in those blanks and create a comfort level."
Yes Mr. Graham, she must understand the word "strict constructionist." Ah, South Carolina. How I miss thee.

In other news, check out that voting record link that Yahoo! News now provides after representatives' names. Nice!



The RIAA is unhappy that XM and Sirius enable customers to record content. RIAA: STFU.
nicholasjay writes "The RIAA is at it again. Now they don't like satellite radio. From the article 'The record industry ... believes the recording capability [of satellite radio receivers] is a clear copyright violation and could take revenue away from paid download music services.' This comes on the heels of both Sirius and XM announcing mp3 enabled players and the ability to record music heard on the radio. Also from the article: 'RIAA may seek $1 billion plus in music rights fees for a new contract covering 2007 to 2012 to replace the current $80 million pact that expires in 2006.'"



A WAPSA to save our content... again...
You know the drill. Click the link below to contact your congress members. After you've sent a letter, using the talking points below, try giving your members' offices a call and tell them why the broadcast flag is a bad idea. This is especially important for those of you who have a member on the appropriate committee (see the list below). If you don't have a member on either of the committees, your letter will go to the chairmen and ranking members.
Link



It's funny how something I've known for a long time can make me nauseous when I see it in print.
President George W. Bush allegedly told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, the BBC will report in a program slotted to run Oct. 17, RAW STORY can reveal.

The BBC errantly posted a press release link on their website early, revealing the documentary's contents.

[...]

Foreign Minister Shaath declares: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"

Prime Minister Mazen recounts how President Bush told him: "I have a moral and religious obligation. So I will get you a Palestinian state."




First of all, it's encouraging that a Republican-controlled senate would vote this way.

Second, here's the interesting part: Bush said that if this bit was included in the $440 BILLION military spending bill, he'd veto it. Now that it could be included (if it passes the House), he could either let it go (and fail to show resolve or stay the course) or veto it (a $440 billion military spending bill). This is very good news!
Bush administration officials say the legislation would limit the president’s authority and flexibility in war.

But lawmakers from each party have said Congress must provide U.S. troops with clear standards for detaining, interrogating and prosecuting terrorism suspects in light of allegations of mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay and the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

“We demanded intelligence without ever clearly telling our troops what was permitted and what was forbidden. And when things went wrong, we blamed them and we punished them,” said McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

“Our troops are not served by ambiguity. They are crying out for clarity, and Congress cannot shrink from this duty,” said McCain, R-Ariz.

The Senate was expected to vote on the overall spending bill by weeks’ end. The House-approved version of it does not include the detainee provisions. It is unclear how much support the measure has in the GOP-run House.


Our world in numbers and algorithms. (via my dad)



If anyone, anyone, would do this, it's Jeb Bush.
Governor Jeb Bush has timed a Florida children's literacy promotion involving reading "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" to the release of the movie adaptation of the book produced by a big-time Republican donor. That the book has some pretty subtle Christian evangelizing doesn't matter so much to us; we suspect the deal stinks just as bad if you're a believer. Talk about cross-promotion.

What's next? "Drive to Work Day" for the opening of "Cars"? We'd prefer "Brokeback Mountain's Ride a Cowboy" event.





Brilliant design work ahead.
150 awesome images from London Design Week, including 100 Percent Design, 100 Percent Design East, [re]design, Design UK, Designersblock, and Off The Hook. View all the galleries here.



This is an impressive step forward against the current copywrong laws. [Wider Angle is licensed through CC.]
Yahoo's latest crawl has identified a jaw-dropping 53 million Creative Commons-licensed work on the Web. About one in 250 of the pages Yahoo indexes are CC licensed. Link (Thanks, Mia!)



I'm not sure that I care, but on the off chance that I do, apparently the much-hyped, much-denied, much-shrugged-over iPod with video will be out on October 12.
Petey_Alchemist writes "Apple Insider is reporting that Apple will release a video iPod on October 12th, possibly in conjunction with the announcement of Apple's fourth quarter results. From the article 'Although details are scarce, sources who claim to have seen the new iPod describe it as being similar to Apple's 60GB iPod photo player, but several millimeters thinner. The device reportedly sports a smaller click-wheel akin to that of the iPod nano's, making way for a larger, higher-resolution color display that extends further down the face of the device.' "



CNN is running an article that goes likes this...
U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers gave mixed answers on same-sex rights in a questionnaire she filled out from a Texas gay rights group during her successful 1989 run for the Dallas City Council.

She told the group she believed gay men and lesbians should have the same civil rights as straight Americans, but that she opposed repeal of the state's sodomy law criminalizing same-sex sexual conduct.
That's because, while she believes gay people are people (a step in the right direction for neo-cons), she thinks they choose to be that way and can change. She worked with Exodus Ministries, as stated by BUSH on TELEVISION, which aims to turn homosexuals into heterosexuals.

Their tagline: "Freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ."

One more time: "Freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ."


She's daft and unfit to be a lottery commissioner, let alone a Supreme Court justice. This country deserves much, much better.

CORRECTION
It has been brought to our attention that Exodus Ministries is NOT Exodus International, the anti-gay organization referenced in our post. This slipped by in a moment of drunken court outrage and we feel very stupid. Wider Angle regrets the error.

However, she is still opposed to anal sex and we stand by the statement that she is daft and unfit...



A scary bill has just been drafted in and for Indiana. They're becoming the Missouri of the midwest.

From the Booman Tribune:
Republican lawmakers are drafting new legislation that will make
marriage a requirement for motherhood in the state of Indiana,
including specific criminal penalties for unmarried women who do
become pregnant "by means other than sexual intercourse."

According to a draft of the recommended change in state law, every
woman in Indiana seeking to become a mother throu gh assisted
reproduction therapy such as in vitro fertilization, sperm donation,
and egg donation, must first file for a "petition for parentage" in
their local county probate court.

Only women who are married will be considered for the "gestational
certificate" that must be presented to any doctor who facilitates the
pregnancy. Further, the "gestational certificate" will only be given
to married couples that successfully complete the same screening
process currently required by law of adoptive parents.

As it the draft of the new law reads now, an intended parent "who
knowingly or willingly participates in an artificial reproduction
procedure" without court approval, "commits unauthorized
reproduction, a Class B misdemeanor." The criminal charges will be
the same for physicians who commit "unauthorized practice of
artificial reproduction."
And it gets weirder...
"It's probably not a surprise that only married heterosexuals would qualify, but the other information the bill suggests be collected reads like something from Eugenics manual:
Sec. 12.

(a) Before intended parents may commence assisted reproduction, the intended parents shall obtain an assessment from a licensed child placing agency in the intended parents' state of residence.

(b) The assessment must follow the normal practice for assessments in a domestic infant adoption procedure and must include the following information:

(1) The intended parents' purpose for the assisted reproduction.

(2) The fertility history of the intended parents, including the pregnancy history and response to pregnancy losses of the woman.

(3) An acknowledgment by the intended parents that the child may not be the biological child of at least one (1) of the intended parents depending on the type of artificial reproduction procedure used.

(4) A list of the intended parents' family and friend support system.

(5) A plan for sharing any known genetic information with the child.

(6) Personal information about each intended parent, including the following:

(A) Family of origin.

(B) Values.

(C) Relationships.

(D) Education.

(E) Employment and income.

(F) Hobbies and talents.

(G) Physical description, including the general health of the individual.

(H) Birth verification.

(I) Personality description, including the strengths and weaknesses of each intended parent.
"If this passes, expect follow-up legislation that bans turkey basters."
This is America, right? So now our babies can own guns, they just have to be cared for by a heterosexual married couple.

Indianians, we other 49 states would be happy to have you. Please bring a lot of... whatever it is you have in Indiana. Leave the fast cars there.



The New Yorker reviews Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine in fine form.

Also, if you're planning on getting that 8 DVD collection for $100, do it now.





I'm addicted to the new Kanye West album. Newsweek interviews him.





No more toe stubbing or toilet missing in the middle of the night. Welcome to the slipper revolution.

LEDs.



The summary of this article floored me:
Physicists in Australia say they've slowed a laser enough to save information on it. It brings us one step closer to quantum computing.
What the... WHAT?

Scientists can map information onto light beams using photons, which, like all elementary particles, have "spin." Spin gives them a natural orientation, similar to a compass needle. The spin can be oriented up or down, representing a one or zero. Flipping from up to down has the same effect as switching a tiny transistor on or off.

In the spooky world of quantum mechanics, particles like photons behave in mind-bending fashion, and can actually be oriented up and down simultaneously, until they are observed or measured. This arrangement is known as quantum superposition, and results in a unit of information known as a qubit (quantum bit), instead of the traditional bit.

The processing power of a quantum system -- and it is formidable -- is a direct result of the superposition state. Since the qubit can represent several values at once, a quantum system is exponentially more efficient than its classical counterparts. Just 40 qubits would equal the power of today's supercomputers.


This came in today from far-flung Atlanta-based correspondent Mike Jacobs.

Harvey Danger is releasing their new album on BitTorrent for FREE. Here's Mike over IM:
Harvey danger (the band responsible for that Flagpole sitta song in the late 90s) has finally released a new album. While that is not really news in and of itself, the fact that they are releasing it via bittorrent for free is. Check out www.harveydanger.com/downloads to read about why they want to do this, and to get the album. not that great of a band, but hey, i'm gonna support any musical artist that is willing to embrace the file-sharing technologies.
While Harvey Danger is being cool, Microsoft is not only being stupid, but wasteful economically and environmentally. They're releasing a new technology for single-play DVDs! Plus, people will have to buy new equipment to watch the movies. Yeah, I think Americans really go for spending lots of money to knowingly restrict their rights. I guess Microsoft is targeting the Bushies?
The revolutionary product could be on the market as early as next year, with the new DVD players needed to view them. Microsoft hopes it will help the company dominate home entertainment as it dominates the desktop computer market.

The film industry has been growing increasingly alarmed at the prospect of film fans using the internet to download pirated films, just as music fans download copyrighted songs on their personal computers. Researchers at Microsoft believe they have a simple solution to the challenge of piracy. Hollywood’s movie moguls are said to be excited at the prospect of having a piracy-proof means of distribution.
Something smells like laserdiscs...



Couldn't say it any better myself...
Oil giant BP says hurricane damage repairs will cost $700 million, forcing them to shut down one of the giant pools of money they swim in.





The Open Content Alliance is a public domain and in-copyright information-from-book search site from the Internet Archive and Yahoo.

The new project, called the Open Content Alliance, has the wide-ranging goal of digitizing historical works of fiction along with specialized technical papers. In addition to Yahoo, its members include the Internet Archive, the University of California, and the University of Toronto, as well as the National Archive in England and others.




The Guardian interviewed Jon Stewart, and explained to its UK readers what The Daily Show is.
The Daily Show - a British equivalent would be somewhere between Have I Got News For You and The Fast Show - won Emmy Awards for best comedy and best writing. Stewart's book, America, a jokey guide to democracy, was the year's nonfiction bestseller.

[...]

Stewart knows his fans are out there, but... "One of the things we try not to do is to fall in love with the audience." He understands, to an extent, why he is popular - "If you feel like your philosophy is not being served by either the government or the media, then you will find comfort in a point of view that sounds or feels familiar" - but to pander to it would be counterproductive, he says. The criteria are: "Is that funny? Is that smart? Is that good? Not will those people be mad at us, will they like it." In short, Stewart is self-conscious about being unselfconscious. "The only skill I have is writing jokes," he says. "Like anything if you have an ability, ultimately you want to apply it to something you care about. Otherwise, you're just jerking off in your cage ... which also has its advantages."
UPDATE
The Daily Show will be airing in the UK beginning next Monday!



Unbelievably, DeLay was indicted on a money laundering charge today.

DeLay, 58, was charged with money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering today. Under House of Representatives rules, he had to step down as majority leader, the No. 2 Republican post in that body, after the initial indictment handed up on Sept. 28 charged him with a single count of conspiracy.

Lawyers for DeLay earlier today had tried to get the conspiracy indictment thrown out, saying it wasn't applicable because the law making it illegal went into effect after the alleged infraction. The new charges followed. DeLay has denied any wrongdoing and called the latest charges brought Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle ``an abomination.''

I actually almost believe DeLay. If anyone knows what an abomination is, it's certainly him.





The Daily Show takes on DeLay.

The Daily Show also takes on Michael Brown, Hurrican Rita, and interviews Chuck Schumer on John Roberts via torrents from Common Bits.



First, let me take this moment to throw up a little after reading the subject.

Memory clear, it looks like Margaret Thatcher could be in a bit of trouble, and Tom DeLay even more than he is already, which is hard to imagine unless there were an international drug ring involved. (Would you be surprised?)

The 79-year-old former Premier is said to have met Congressman Tom DeLay in Britain while he was on a suspected favours-for-freebies scam.

In return for his free holiday, DeLay - who resigned as Republican leader of Congress last week after being accused of laundering political funds - allegedly backed legislation favourable to lobby groups.

Disclosing that US authorities were seeking aid from UK counterparts, a secret Home Office briefing says: "One visit to the UK involved a meeting with Mrs Margaret Thatcher.

[...]

The revelations will be a body-blow to Lady Thatcher's reputation and dash Tory morale on the opening day of its crucial party conference.

If Lady Thatcher is found to have been involved in the alleged scam she could face a criminal probe in the US or even be banned from travelling to the country.

Her spokesman confirmed police had been in contact about the DeLay meeting. But he insisted there was no question of wrongdoing.

No question, indeed.




The housing help that hurricane victims desperately need, and was promised by FEMA and the Administration, will be ending in about two weeks. As a stipend, those who sign up for this limited time act now offer can get a lump sum of money that is LESS THAN IT COSTS TO TARP THEIR ROOF.
[M]ore than 100,000 people still reside in such makeshift housing, and 400,000 more are in hotel rooms costing up to $100 a night.

Housing options promised by the federal government a month ago have largely failed to materialize. Cruise ships and trailer parks have so far proved in large part to be unworkable, while an American Red Cross program -- paid for by the federal government -- that allows storm victims to stay in motels or hotels is scheduled to expire Oct. 15. It is projected to cost the Federal Emergency Management Agency as much as $168 million.

Federal officials are struggling to launch an alternative interim housing program that would give families whose homes are destroyed or uninhabitable a lump sum of $2,358 in rental assistance, or $786 a month for three months, with the possibility of a 15-month extension. So far, 330,000 families have signed up for the housing assistance. But if evacuees have to use those stipends to pay for hotel rooms when FEMA stops covering such lodging, the funds will not last long.

"The possibility of a 15-month extension" should make all those poor families feel much better.

Ronnie Ashworth, a truck driver from Chalmette, La., east of New Orleans, currently lives at the Baton Rouge Marriott. If no other housing is forthcoming after Oct. 15, "I'll be sleeping in the back of my truck," Ashworth, 60, said. "I have no funds right now."




The declining effectiveness of the 30 second television spot is raising its price. Anyone see something wrong here?

Here's a list of the most expensive shows this season. Among the top 10 are Extreme Makeover Home Edition (you know, the show with all the volunteers?) where a half-minute ad costs $355,000. An ad on Two and a Half Men, which is essentially a perpetually derailing train, will set you back $293,000.



So instead of a potentially controversial performance center, the feeling is now a much less controversial shopping area would be more appropriate for where the trade towers once stood.
A day after evicting the International Freedom Center museum from the memorial area at ground zero for being too controversial, officials described a plan yesterday for a half-million square feet of retail space elsewhere on the World Trade Center site.

And they said the cultural building designed by the Norwegian firm Snohetta, which was once intended for both the Freedom Center and the Drawing Center, will effectively become an extension of the underground memorial museum devoted solely to 9/11.



Beautiful photos of droplets caught in time. Oh, and a depth-of-field Java applet.



In what was supposed to be a fun throwaway event for Advertising Week peeps in NYC, Jon Stewart mistook the forum for a place to speak one's mind and, well, we know what happens when he does that. Little lame-seeking laughing razors fly from his lips.

Will Jon Stewart save American media? (Oh please?)

From Folio:

Presiding over a dais of top consumer magazine editors, Jon Stewart, Emmy award winning comedian and host of The Daily Show, skewered Time’s Jim Kelly, Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter, Cosmopolitan’s Kate White and Dave Zinczenko of Men’s Health in front of 1,000-plus industry and advertising executives on Thursday evening at Lincoln Center in New York.


“Do the men on the cover always have to be—what’s the word—glistening?” Stewart asked Zinczenko of Men’s Health. “I enjoy health, yet when I read it, I don’t know whether to go to the doctor or rub my nipples.”


Stewart’s sharp wit was on full display. He initiated the barrage on the panel in alphabetical order because, he said, “you wouldn’t believe the egos on these people.”


Vanity Fair’s recent Paris Hilton cover was on Stewart’s radar, too. “She has an X-factor,” Graydon Carter said of Hilton. “I’m not sure what her talents are.”


“Kate, would you tell Graydon what her talents are,” Stewart said.


Be an informed consumer with Alonovo.com. The company responsibility ratings conform to your values so you can determine where best to spend your money.



Think Progress confirms what we've all known for a long time, but this makes it pretty official. An anonymous source tells the New York Times that Dick Cheney was directly involved in the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's name. Another anonymous source revealed to George Stephanopoulos that President Bush is directly involved in the leak as well.

Consequently, charges of criminal conspiracy could be soon to follow.

Here's the Think Progress page that keeps track of the mess that is treason.

UPDATE
Crooks & Liars has video.










This joke doodle, from Randall Munroe's xkcd.com, made me laugh and laugh and laugh. It depicts a hidden message deep in the digits of Pi that reads HELP I'M TRAPPED IN A UNIVERSE FACTORY. Link
It made me giggle too. Pi Factory, we've got ourselves a brand new kind of funny.

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