Wider Angle: Links for 09.28.06 - The United States Now Officially Tortures People Edition

I could not be angrier that the fucking United States Congress approved Bush's torture bill, and it will now be sent on to the fucknut-in-chief to sign. Here's a rundown of the motherfuckers who voted for the bill and the humans who voted against it. This bill retracts Habeus Corpus, in effect since 1215, and now the United States, once considered the moral and ethical bastion of the world, can torture anyone at the President's discretion and they can't even inquire about why they're there. The New York Times op-ed page gives a handy guide to everything that's inexcusably wrong with this bill. I'm going to be ill. [Impossibly appropriate photo by Goggla on Flickr]

The Daily Show examines Bush's power to legalize torture.

"What has changed in the last five years that our Government is so inept and our people so terrified that we must do what no bomb or attack could ever do by taking away the very freedoms that define America? Why would we allow the terrorists to win by doing to ourselves what they could never do, and abandon the principles for which so many Americans today and through our history have fought and sacrificed?" - Senator Patrick Leahy

After Bush had Clinton's plans regarding al Qaeda and the Taliban, the administration gave the Taliban $43 million for declaring that opium is bad, making the United States the greatest monetary supporter of the Taliban for 2001!

David Pogue doesn't think there will be an iPhone, but iTunes 7.0.1 says differently when you read through its insides. Since Pogue's article is based entirely on opinion, he shouldn't have even written the piece, but the most recent iTunes release makes him look even dumber. By the way, iTunes 7.0.1 corrects some of the more irritating flaws of 7.0 like stu t t ering and 100% cpu usage. Ahem.

The city lights of Reykjavik, Iceland were turned off for half an hour tonight while an astronomer talked about the stars on the radio to begin the film festival. Awesome.

China has a thriving organ harvesting business. A country that contains 1/5th of the world's population executes more people per year than all the rest of the world's countries combined. [via digg] See related: Bodies: the exhibition.

Stanford University has faculty lectures, music, global issues reports, and lots more for FREE on iTunes at itunes.stanford.edu only.

If you want "You May Not Squeeze My Business" or "Put Your Head Deep My Butt" on a shirt or sticker, this site is for you.

If you're going to be in NYC this weekend, check out the Wired NextFest. I'll be heading out there on Saturday if you'd like to meet up and hang out with a beer at an overpriced food card. Richard Branson debuted the designs for SpaceShipTwo which looks, as Xeni Jardin said, "fucking awesome."

To, I'm sure, your great surprise, the pharmaceutical companies confuse patients about effectiveness of drugs by misrepresenting statistics, very frequently convincing people to take drugs they don't need.

A Fembot from the Austin Powers movie is for sale on ebay. This is what happens when f/x creators get poor.

The UK's Channel 4 produced one of the best, funniest, and most heartfelt commercials I have ever seen.

XKCD draws an amazing epic during a boring NASA lecture.

Imogen Heap is having a contest to travel to NYC for a show with 3 nights in a hotel. The comp is only open to UK residents, but the video she put together for it is hilarious and adorable.

According to my theories, this decidedly unscientific study reports that MySpace has significantly less than 100 million active users.

As of October 1, 2006, the GIF format will be completely free.

A Chinese professor stripped in an art class to demonstrate there are no taboos in art or discussion. It turns out, students already knew that and didn't need a naked professor to show them. Ick.

Telecom companies like Verizon are fucking rural customers out of their Net access because it's "too expensive" to make it available to them. Fuck Verizon. And fuck AT&T and BellSouth too. Stop screwing over customers and giving information to the NSA, then merging to grow ever bigger and ever closer to the government. I don't want to live in a country where that happens and citizens are powerless against it.

The ratio between a woman's index and ring finger has been shown to determine their athleticism and extrovertedness.

Kazakhstan has purchased very pricey 4-page advertisements in the first sections of the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune to remind us how super awesome they are, and that this has absolutely nothing to do with Borat... or his marching to the White House. Borat in 2008? Can't be worse than who we have now.

I want this lamp with 7 bendable LED tubes to illuminate my many projects. Beautiful for so many reasons.

Let's Say Thanks is a program sponsored by Xerox that lets anyone send a message to one of our troops to support them and thank them for their service to our country. It's completely free and is one of the most direct ways to express your feelings to our brothers and sisters overseas.

Britney Spears is one of the dumbest people on the planet. This video gives me faith in life in a sick, twisted way. The best way.