May 21, 2004, 6:06 p.m. -- (Last
week's weblog)
Top of the Iraq stories:
The
other prisoners: "Most of the coverage of abuse at Abu Ghraib
has focused on male detainees. But what of the five women held in the
jail, and the scores
elsewhere in
Iraq?"
'US soldiers started to shoot us, one by one': The Guardian on the wedding
massacre. Telling details ring true:
The celebration at Mukaradeeb was to be one of the biggest events of the
year for a small village of just 25 houses. Haji Rakat, the father, had finally
arranged a long-negotiated tribal union that would bring together two halves
of one large extended family, the Rakats and the Sabahs.
Haji Rakat's second son, Ashad, would marry Rutba, a cousin from the Sabahs.
In a second ceremony one of Ashad's female cousins, Sharifa, would marry
a young Sabah boy, Munawar.
A large canvas awning had been set up in the garden of the Rakat villa to
host the party. A band of musicians was called in, led by Hamid Abdullah,
who runs the Music of Arts recording studio in Ramadi, the nearest major
town.
He brought his friend Hussein al-Ali, a popular Iraqi singer who performs
on Ramadi's own television channel. A handful of other musicians including
the singer's brother Mohaned, played the drums and the keyboards.
...Remarkably among the survivors were the two married couples, who had
been staying in tents away from the main house, and Haji Rakat himself,
an elderly man who had gone to bed early in a nearby house.
AP: Iraq
Desert Bombing Video Shows Carnage:
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Fragments of musical instruments, tufts of women's hair,
and a large blood stain are among the scenes in Associated Press Television
News film of a destroyed house that survivors say U.S. planes bombed during
a wedding party.
It is the first known footage of the aftermath of Wednesday's attack, which
killed up to 45 people, mostly women and children from the Bou Fahad tribe
in Mogr el-Deeb, a desert village on the Syrian border.
The U.S. military has said the target was a suspected safehouse for foreign
fighters from Syria and denied Friday that children were killed in the airstrikes.
...
Here's the video.
In Baghdad, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief U.S. military spokesman in
Iraq, said the U.S. military would investigate after Iraqi officials reported
the survivors' story.
Update: US military concedes women may have died in airstrike in western
Iraq
Back to Iraq 3.0 is
back in Iraq: Christopher Albritton, former AP and New York Daily News
reporter, is back in Iraq, again financed by small donations from readers.
Link
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Transparency: Blogger Dave
Copeland, a columnist at (Richard
Mellon Scaife's) Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
and occasional penpal of mine, gets Romeneskoed today:
Blogger/newsman begins posting journos' ProfNet requests
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist Dave Copeland says most reporters
aren't allowed to think for themselves, so they rely on experts "who can state
their pre-determined opinion for them." He writes on his blog: "As
a service to readers ...I'm starting a new feature where I'll be posting
actual ProfNet queries from actual journalists. This is your chance to read
the news before it's news!" The first posted query comes from Fox
News Channel's Elisa Cho.
Go watch Dave bust the pinata. And don't miss the comments.
Link
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Stalked
on the campaign trail: Does this make you want to run for office?
Does it make you wonder why any sane person would? From the Chicago Sun-Times:
For the past 10 days, U.S. Senate candidate Barack Obama hasn't been able
to go to the bathroom or talk to his wife on his cell phone without having
a camera-toting political gofer from his Republican rival filming a few feet
away.
In what has to be a first in Illinois politics, Republican Jack Ryan has
assigned one of his campaign workers to record every movement and every word
of the state senator while he is in public.
That means Justin Warfel, armed with a handheld Panasonic digital camcorder,
follows Obama to the bathroom door and waits outside. It means Warfel follows
Obama as he moves from meeting to meeting in the Capitol. And it means Warfel
tails Obama when he drives to his campaign office....
Link
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Internet
Guide to Freighter Travel: If you're young and adventurous, this
is the way to go.
This site has evolved over the past three years, based mainly on
my own experiences aboard ship and in dealings with agents, shipping companies,
and the officers and crew of several ships.
These pages were created to provide as much information as possible to those
interested in this truly unique experience. I suspect that most of you have
never seen a freighter up close, let alone sailed on one. Traveling on a
containership is not better than sex, though it does last longer. It is an
experience you will never forget.
The site quotes Mark Twain:
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things
that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines.
Sail away from the safe harbor.....Explore. Dream. Discover."...Mark
Twain
At 23, I said, "Bye, mom and dad. I'm going to Gambia for a coupla years,
probably come back the long way." (The long way included crossing a stretch
of the Sahara at night sprawled on top of an open boxcar full of iron ore.)
No regrets. Making memories for your deathbed isn't a bad goal in life.
Related: Postcards from
Iceland. Ridiculously beautiful images.
Link
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Recipes for a Rhode Island Summer: I forgot to mention this yesterday. (I
probably forgot because I make it myself. Geesh!)
It's a perennial part of
Summer Guide -- seasonal recipes (lobsters, clams, and
lots more) culled from decades of Providence Journal Food sections.
Every year, new recipes are added, so it's becoming a substantial cookbook.
Check it out if you want to make stuffies out of your quahogs -- or find
out what they are.
Unrelated: Sausagelinks.co.uk. For all your sausage news.
Link
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Nick Berg's dad: George
Bush never looked into Nick's eyes by Michael Berg.
Link
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Archive.org:
Grateful Dead: The
Dead always permitted taping of their concerts, even setting aside a separate
section for tapers. The tapes were traded through 'zines as cassette tapes,
and via computer bulletin boards as huge (pre-mp3) audio files. Here
they are.
Link
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Prince's
'Musicology' strategy has industry buzzing: From Hollywood Reporter,
Prince's idea to include his new CD "Musicology" as part of
his concert ticket price may be the beginning of a music industry revolution.
Since the album's release April 20, "Musicology" CDs handed
out at shows have been included in SoundScan numbers. In the album's first
week
of release, of the 191,275 copies sold, only 12,605 were from ticket sales.
In total, the tour has about 40 shows in arenas with capacities of 17,000-20,000.
Prince's manager-attorney Londell McMillan says Prince will play and give
out CDs to as many as 1.5 million fans during the tour.
"We're actually hoping that it spurs retail growth," McMillan
says. "There is a good 230 million people out there, some of which
will hear that Prince has a great CD, (and) they'll see a show and tell
a friend.
That's the kind of buzz we're trying to create."
Link
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$200 family film is festival hit: In the Guardian (U.K.):
The surprise hit of the Cannes film festival is a movie made by a first-time
director with a budget of precisely $218.32.
Tarnation was created by 31-year-old jobbing actor Jonathan Caouette, using
the Apple Macintosh package iMovie. It is a touching and often disturbing
family history pieced together via photographs, home movie images from the
1970s and 80s, and interviews by Caouette with his mother and grandparents.
The film, part of the directors' fortnight section of the festival, received
a standing ovation.
The budget was spent on 10 tapes for Caouette's video camera and a pair
of angel wings. The latter are used in a scene recreating a play Caouette
directed at school - a musical version of David Lynch's Blue Velvet.
Link
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'Da
Vinci Code' author: I left out even more: Dan Brown's next book
is about the Masons. But...(AP):
Though "The Da Vinci Code" was contentious
enough to produce 10 books attempting to discredit it, its author said he
left out what likely would have been the most controversial part.
Dan Brown said that when he wrote the best seller that dissects the origins
of Jesus Christ and disputes long-held beliefs about Catholicism, he considered
including material alleging that Jesus Christ survived the crucifixion.
While speaking at a benefit Tuesday for a New Hampshire writers' group,
Brown said the theory is backed by a number of "very credible sources," but
that he ultimately decided it was too flimsy.
"For me, that was just three or four steps too far," he told
the crowd of more than 800 people.
Link
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Caffeine may prevent liver damage:
If you are at risk for liver disease, drinking caffeinated coffee and soda
may help protect you from getting it, a new study shows.
According to research presented at the Digestive Disease Week meeting in
New Orleans, a researcher from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive
and Kidney Diseases found people at high risk for liver problems can reduce
their risk by drinking coffee and other caffeinated beverages.
There have been other studies that have shown this effect from caffeine,
said lead researcher Dr. James E. Everhart. However, why caffeine protects
against liver disease is not known.
"Caffeine blocks one receptor found in the brain and liver. This may
have immunological effects, but this is really speculative," he added.
In their study, Everhart and his colleague, Dr. Constance E. Ruhl from Social
and Scientific Systems in Silver Spring, Md., collected data on 5,944 men
and women who were at high risk for liver injury.
The subject's risk came from excessive drinking, hepatitis B or C, iron
overload, obesity or impaired sugar metabolism. ...
...Everhart and Ruhl found the more coffee and caffeine these people drank,
the less likely they were to develop liver injury. This finding was the
same for all age, gender and ethnic groups...
Link
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Can't Find On Google: A good idea ... but it should be part of Google!
The premise: Your search comes up empty. Ask another human if they know
where to find what you're looking for.
Link
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Weekend wierdness:
Talk on Hill heated about DeWine staffer's blog' of sexual trysts: From
Cleveland.com,
The office of straight-laced Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine became the epicenter
of salacious Capitol Hill gossip Wednesday, when it surfaced that an entry-level
DeWine staffer apparently had been chronicling her steamy sex life on an
Internet Web log, or "blog."
The blog was removed from public view after another Washington blog, known
as Wonkette.com, linked to some of the racier passages from the DeWine employee's
online diary. The passages detailed the woman's affairs with several men,
purporting to include a married (but unnamed) chief-of-staff in a federal
agency, and discussed being paid for sex.
"Most of my living expenses are thankfully subsidized by a few generous
older gentlemen," wrote the staffer, who identified herself as "The
Washingtonienne." "I'm sure I am not the only one who makes money
on the side this way: how can anybody live on $25K/year??"
DeWine spokesmen said their office is investigating the woman's Web site
operation and that she might face disciplinary action.
"It is a personnel issue, and we can't discuss it at this point," said
Mike Dawson, DeWine's communications director. He said he didn't know whether
the woman did the things she described, or wrote fantasies.
The woman did not report to work Wednesday and could not be reached for
comment. But Washington was buzzing, thanks in large part to the Wonkette.com blog, whose operator said the controversy doubled the usual traffic to her
gossip and satire Web site.
The capital's audience was particularly amused that the incident occurred
in the office of a conservative senator from a "very swinging" swing
state in the upcoming presidential election, said Wonkette's Ana Marie
Cox. ...
Now, you figure out why somebody working for a senator needs to blog
sex secrets.
Um... she's no longer working for him. The Senator, according
to Wonkette,
fired her today:
STATEMENT FROM THE OFFICE OF U.S. SENATOR MIKE DEWINE (R-OH):
On May 18, 2004, our office became aware of allegations that an employee
had been using Senate resources and work-time to post unsuitable and
offensive material to an Internet Weblog. After investigating these allegations,
our
office has determined that there was an unacceptable use of Senate computers
to post unsuitable and offensive material to an Internet Weblog. Other
inappropriate material was found in the employee’s work area as well.
The employee has been terminated. Because this is a personnel matter, our
office will
not name the employee or have any further comment on this issue.
Female
Employee Finds Web Cam Under Her Desk: Is this story serious? wftv.com
is responsible:
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. -- An Orange County Fire Department employee is supposed
to protect people's privacy, but police say he violated a female employee
by using a small web camera to spy on her. Now, the information systems
administrator has resigned from his job.
Police say Hector Ray Valle (photo left) used a web camera at the Orange
County Fire Department to watch the female employee from under a desk.
Fortunately, the employee noticed it. She was at her desk and she either
dropped something or bumped her leg and looked underneath the desk. What
she found was a camera and, when she took a closer look, realized it was
pointed right at her, installed to look right up her skirt.
..."It was really sophisticated where he could actually transmit
wirelessly or through a cable network and I believe that's what he
was trying to do," says Carlos Torres, Orange County Sheriff's Department....
..."Anywhere, he would have access anywhere to be able to transmit
any live footage from that web cam," explains Torres.
Whether or not he had transmitted it, detectives don't know.
...Detectives say, as soon as they're done with the case, they'll forward
it to the State Attorney's Office to press charges. Since they don't have
any proof that the images were transmitted, they can only arrest Valle
for attempted voyeurism, a second-degree misdemeanor.
Are they waiting for Polaroids to turn up? This is TV, folks, there are
no printouts to prove "the images were transmitted."
Feline Medical Curiosities: Don't look if you're unbearably empathic.
Rate my jeep: View
and Rate Jeeps / Public
Jeep MoBlog
80schildren.com: "Here
you can reminisce about your childhood by remembering television shows, toys,
fashion, video games and more." Successor to Stuck
in the '70s?
Plastic
balls: Flash game. Not bad.
Link
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May 20, 2004, 9:50 p.m.
Unexpected family business...
How
to play purchased music on more than one system: At engadget,
So you’ve got an iPod, you go and buy music but then your machines
dies, or have many many computers and devices you listen to music on, or
maybe sometimes you use an operating system not supported by iTunes, how
can you listen to your purchased music? Well, usually you can’t-
why? Because the songs you purchased are DRM protected, that means you
can only
listen to them on specific computers and devices. For most folks the limits
of a few computers or devices are fine, but for the gadget geek- nope,
we have too many computers and devices. It would be like buying a DVD but
only
being able to watch it in some rooms, or only some TVs.
Now to be clear, this isn’t a way to take music you bought and give
it to someone else, this is so you can listen to your own purchased music
on other systems or devices. In fact, your personal info is still in the
file. The application we’re going to talk about is called hymn, and
here is the description from the site:
The purpose of hymn is to allow you to exercise your fair-use rights under
copyright law. It allows you to free your iTunes Music Store purchases
from their DRM restrictions with no sound quality loss. These songs can
then be
played outside of the iTunes environment, even on operating systems not
supported by iTunes. It works on Mac OS X, many unix(-ish) variants and
on Windows....
Link
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11:45 a.m.
After work today: R.I. Pop Culture Show: This sounds worth doing -- I love
the list in this press release. It could be the answer sheet for a trivia
quiz about who and what drove the concept of cool through the past few decades
here.
In all its glory:
Rhode Island Pop Culture Show
Presented by Gallery Agniel, Dr. Paul Buhle and Brown University, and
the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame
Reception: This Thursday, May 20
5:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Rhode Island Historical Society : Aldrich House
110 Benevolent Street, Providence, RI (East Side)
(Corner of Benevolent Street and Cooke Street)
The reception is free and open to the public
For more information, call Al Gomes at 401-274-4770
The multimedia installation brings to life the narrative of RI's rich
pop cultural heritage along with cutting edge, underground, or otherwise
off-the-mainstream-radar cultural and artistic movements that have unfolded
in the Ocean State from 1940 to the present day.
Items on exhibit include recordings, artwork, posters, t-shirts, memorabilia
and video featuring:
Doug Allen
Geoff Adams
A. Michelle
'Andre the Giant Has a Posse'
The Art Ship Project
AS220
Mardo Atoyan
Dave Bettencourt and Eric Izzi
Big Nazo
Big Noise
Blind Dates
Blues Outlet
Boneyard
Bright Night Providence
John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band
Brian Chippendale
Club Babyhead
'Complex World'
Bill Conti
The Cowsills
Mark Cutler
The Dames
Les Daniels
Mary DeBerry
'Digital Mystery Tour : Side One - Ten'
The Dolls
Jim Draper
The Fabulous Motels
Paul Fata
First Night Providence
Fort Thunder
Al Gomes
Dan Gosch
Richard Goulis
Shalagh Hogan
'The Home Team Video'
John Housley
Mike Izzi
Langston Hughes Center
The Last Call
Lightning Bolt
The Living Room
Debra Lopez
Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel
Maasai
The Mad Peck
Xander Marro
The Met Cafe
Mill City Rockers
Frank Mullin
The Mundanes
Neutral Nation
The NewPaper
The Nice Paper
Clay Osborne
Pan-Twilight Circus
Perishable Theatre
Picture Start
Pirate Satellite
The Probers
Providence Black Repertory Theatre
Purple Ivy Shadows
Rash of Stabbings
Rhode Island Bandwagon
Rites and Reasons
The Rocket
Roomful of Blues
Rubber Rodeo
Silver Sun, Ltd.
Six Finger Satellite
The Schemers
Star Theatre Productions
Helen Stickler
Trinity Repertory Theatre
Tyger Tyger
WBRU Rock Hunt
Jim Wolpaw
The Young Adults
And much much more
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Background on the show:
The Rhode Island Pop Culture Show exhibit was developed by Sara Agniel
of Gallery Agniel in collaboration with students from Dr. Paul Buhle's
oral history classes at Brown University from a series of oral history
interviews the students conducted with people whose importance to the Ocean
State's visual arts, theatre, music, and film communities needs to be widely
recognized. The exhibit, says Dr. Buhle, 'Traces the participants in bohemian
and experimental artistic activities from the late 1940s until the present,
elucidating the intersection of interracial jazz audiences and musicians
to the intersection of new generations, it tells a story fascinating and
still little documented, let alone understood. The show is an exciting
experiment in mixed media exploring our collective selves.'
The show also had the assistance of RI pop culture figures and archivists
like Rudy Cheeks, Scott Duhamel, and Big Noise's Al Gomes and A. Michelle,
who have just unveiled the new Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame, whose archives
all contributed to the Rhode Island Pop Culture Show.
AS220, Nadav Benjamin, Joseph Fletcher, Frank Mullin, Matt Obert, John
Peck, Ted Peffer, Ricardo Pitts-Wiley, The Providence Black Repertory Theatre,
Rites and Reasons, Cynthia Reed, Joann Seddan, and Shawn Wallace also contributed
from their personal collections to the show.
Items on exhibit include recordings, artwork, posters, t-shirts, memorabilia,
video and a sound excerpts kiosk.
Agniel describes the content of the exhibition and says, 'From the students'
oral history work, we culled stories that are further told in the visual
objects from the recent and more distant past - be it a photo of jazz musicians
at the Celebrity Club or a hand silk-screened poster from Fort Thunder,
the connections across this history of artistic endeavor in Rhode Island
are resonant.'
A two-part exhibition, The Rhode Island Pop Culture Show will travel to
Newport in July 2004 where it will be exhibited at the Newport Art Museum
in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the Newport Jazz Festival.
A catalogue of the exhibition is forthcoming this spring authored by Paul
Buhle and Sara Agniel. Paul Buhle is a lecturer in the History and American
Civilization departments at Brown University. He is author or editor of
27 books including Popular Culture In America, Encyclopedia of the American
Left, Clr. James: The Artist as Revolutionary, Vanishing Rhode Island,
and Working Lives Of Rhode Island.
The Rhode Island Pop Culture Show closes Saturday, May 29, 2004. The exhibition
will be open for viewing from April 13 through May 29, 2004, Tuesday through
Saturday from 10 am - 4
Link
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Virtual
devils curse Internet church:
We blogged
the launch of the 3D virtual-reality Church of Fools last week. Already...
LONDON (Reuters) - The world's first Internet church has fallen victim
to a plague of virtual demons, some of whom have been logging on as Satan
and
unleashing strings of expletives during sermons....
Headline writers had fun with this one:
Internet
Ship of Fools runs aground: Online church doesn’t have a
prayer with a congregation of trolls (Inquirer)
Online
church blocks Satan visits (BBC)
Online
church smites sinners (Register)
Link
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Summer Guide in
the can: Many
hours and hands went into projo.com's online Summer Guide. Lots of stuff to
do, of course, and useful links (public boat ramps, a beach map, big music
schedules).
It includes the
launch of some features made possible by our
new survey tool, including readers' restaurant, beach and movie reviews.
Also a first: Some stories that the newspaper had no room for are online
only. Go check it out.
Link
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May 19, 2004, 2:54 p.m. -- (Last
week's weblog)
Roger
Ebert: Less is Moore in subdued, effective Fahrenheit
9/11:
CANNES, France -- Michael Moore the muckraking wiseass has been replaced
by a more subdued version in "Fahrenheit 9/11," his new documentary
questioning the anti-terrorism credentials of the Bush regime. In the Moore
version, President Bush, his father and members of their circle have received
$1.5 billion from Saudi Arabia over the years, attacked Iraq to draw attention
from their Saudi friends, and have lost the hearts and minds of many of
the U.S. servicemen in the war....
Link
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Revolving
restaurants: An interesting history of whirling slowly while
eating at Metropolis magazine:
The revolving restaurant is an American idea that conquered the world. What
began as an architectural folly for the 1962 World's Fair has spread to almost
every corner of the globe, atop broadcast towers like the Space Needle and
crowning modern glass-and-steel hotels. As the long postwar boom of American-led
trade and tourism marched on through the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties,
these spinning dining rooms became symbols of optimism, progress, and success.
Yet Americans have cooled to the dynamic dining they helped popularize.
Some revolving restaurants have simply stopped rotating, others have
been refurbished into conference centers; their novelty has long been supplanted
by Rainforest Cafés, IMAX theaters, and corporate skyboxes. Only
one revolving restaurant--the Stratosphere in Las Vegas--has been built
in the
U.S. this decade, and even that has to compete with a roller coaster
perched atop it and a casino at its base.
Link
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House
Seeks Further E-Voting Research: At Internetnews.com,
With national elections less than six months away, two key committees of
the U.S. House of Representatives are seeking a General Accounting Office
(GAO) investigation into the security and reliability of electronic voting
machines.
In a May 14 letter to the GAO, the chairmen and ranking members of both
the House Government Reform Committee and the Judiciary Committee asked
the GAO to "identify the significant issues" that could "potentially
allow unscrupulous individuals to alter the vote count."
In the aftermath of the 2000 controversial presidential vote count in Florida,
Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002 to help states fund
the replacement of punch card or lever voting machines with electronic voting
systems. The transition is proving to be as controversial as the Florida
hanging chads.
"While the existing data indicate that these machines can be more accurate
than outdated punch card machines, experts are becoming increasingly concerned
that many of these electronic voting machines have other flaws," the
letter states.
Link
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May 18, 2004, 6:05 p.m.
Short blog today. I'm producing our Summer Guide for Thursday, and many
pages, photos, listings, icons, stories and ideas are flying through the
air today.
Jon Stewart, commencement speaker: The Daily Show's Jon Stewart (William
and Mary ’84) gave the Williamsburg, Va. college's commencement
address Sunday before an audience of 13,000.
In the photo at right, by the college to Tim Jones, Jon Stewart, right,
displays the honorary doctorate of arts presented by William and
Mary President
Timothy
J. Sullivan.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch covered
it, and excerpted this:
About "the real world," Stewart said, "To be blunt, we
broke it . . . Somewhere between the gold rush of easy Internet profits
and an
arrogant sense of endless empire, we heard sort of a pinging noise, and
the damn thing just died on us. So, I apologize.
"But, here's the good news. You fix this thing, and you're the new
greatest generation," Stewart said, referring to the war on terror. "Even
if you don't, you're not going to have much trouble surpassing my generation.
If you end up getting your picture taken next to a naked-guy pile of enemy
prisoners and don't give the thumbs up, you outdid us."
Here's Stewart's entire
address.
Link
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Franken V. Coulter: How the partisans saw it. Friday night, Al
Franken and Ann
Coulter debated under the sponsorship of The Connecticut
Forum in Hartford.
The Hartford Courant wrote a short
story (reg.req.) about it, with a photo,
but I wanted more. (The story is now on Franken's website.)
Here, courtesy of the passionate partisans on the left at DemocraticUnderground.com and
on the right at FreeRepublic.com,
are the respective threads on how it went. Scroll down on each link to catch
the buzz. (No holds barred at either site.)
The Courant ran a poll afterwards:
Who had the better argument at the Connecticut Forum Friday night?
10.3% Ann Coulter (91 responses)
83.1% Al Franken (736 responses)
6.7% Both hit below the belt (59 responses)
886 total responses
Link
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(Digital) camera basics: Sim
Cam teaches you about F stops and shutter speed.
It starts with a photo of a couple embracing against a busy outdoor background,
as your eye would see it, with everything sharp and in focus.
You can then change either or both the F stop or the shutter speed to see
what will happen.
I rather like f5.6 at 1/125th of a second, which lets the couple pop out
of a distinguishable, but blurry, building background.
Getting used to the concepts is the hardest part, and this lets you see
exactly how "depth of field" (how much of the foreground and background are
in focus) works.
Here's the site's explanation:
Learn about photography - Try setting the SimCam to F2.8 - 1/250 and shooting
a frame.
Next set the exposure to F5.6 - 1/60 Notice how the overall exposure ( brightness
) did not change. The exposure remained the same because you gave the camera
TWO STOPS LESS light through the aperture, and then gave it TWO STOPS MORE
light by leaving the shutter open for longer.
Useful stuff, and if you practice you won't be trying to remember settings
when the perfect moment comes.
Link
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Cicadaville, Cincinnati's
premier Cicada information source, takes its inspiration from The Onion.
(Motto: "Cicadas kill. Save yourself.") Pretty funny:
Protect the Children!
Your children are not safe until you follow our instructions.
Link
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L.L.
Bean sues retailers over pop-up ads: Maine Today reports,
L.L. Bean is suing four retailers in an escalation of the Freeport company's
battle over pop-up ads on its Web site.
The suit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Portland, names two department
store chains - Nordstrom and JC Penney - along with Atkins Nutritionals and
Gevalia, a mail-order coffee company. Bean is asking the court for damages
and an order barring the companies from allowing their pop-up ads to appear
when Internet users access the llbean.com Web site.
Bean blames "spyware" that it says is hidden in many innocent-seeming
free programs, such as one that claims to keep a computer's clock synchronized
with government atomic clocks. Those programs, offered on the Internet, also
track the sites a computer user visits, allowing the software to "pop
up" a client's advertisements based on the interests suggested by
the record....
... It started with a cease and desist letter that Bean wrote to Gator.com,
which later became Claria Corp. Gator.com had been offering a program to
Web users called eWallet, which promised to store computer passwords and
credit card information to make it easier to make online purchases. The program
also told users that it would pop up ads of interest as they used the Internet.
When Web browsers typed in llbean.com, an ad offering a discount at competitor
Eddie Bauer popped up....
Link
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Low-Carb
Losing Steam: Demand
May Not Be Keeping Up With Supply of Products. WaPo. This story is pretty
strange: Just how many low-carb products can you eat and still be on a diet?
Low-carb products are usually sweet things with the sugar replaced by Splenda
or sugar alcohols, or breads that may come in at five to nine carbs per slice.
If you're shooting for 40 carb grams a day, you don't get all that many places
to spend the rest of them if you start with toast or a sandwich.
Most of what low-carbers eat is meat, fish, chicken, eggs, salads and green
vegetables. Budgetable cheats are croutons, bread crumbs, nuits and a few
fruits such as tomatoes, plums and canteloupe slices in moderation.
There's going to be lot of competition among low-carb products for what
remains of our meager disposable carb grams. And face it, the tastes
and textures of some of these products -- such as airy, spongey breads --
aren't that hot.
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Broadway Theatres
to Dim Lights in Honor of Tony Randall: Playbill reports
that
Broadway will mourn the loss of theatrical star Tony Randall (tonight)
by dimming the lights on all marquees at 8 PM.
As is tradition, the lights will dim for one minute at 8 PM.
Tony Randall, the star of a string of 1950s Doris Day films and the 1970s
television sitcom "The Odd Couple," who late in life realized
a dream by founding the National Actors Theatre, died May 18 in his sleep
yesterday
evening at NYU Medical Center due to complications from a prolonged illness,
a spokesman said. He was 84 years old....
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May 17, 2004, 7:32 p.m.
Wedding advice, Nick Berg, Iraq, a flying car, sculptures that race: Mainstream media is all over the wedding boom, so I'm not. But here's a
contribution:
A
note
from
John
Scalzi,
a
married
blogger
who
has
performed
weddings, offering nice
advice to
those
about to
join the
club. If you're sick of Iraq, scroll down to the fun stuff.
NickBerg.org: A memorial page
Nick
Berg's Killing: 50
Fishy Circumstances, Contradictory Claims, and Videotape Anomalies. with
comments, at Kuroshin.org
Similar, parallel thread at Break
for News.
"River" at Baghdad
Burning, an Iraqi woman, writes,
The assumption that Al Zarqawi himself was doing the beheading seems a
little far-fetched. So now the heads of terrorism in the world seem to
be Ossama
Bin Ladin, Aimen Al Dhawahiri and Abu Mussa'ab Al Zarqawi. Here's some
food for thought- Ossama is from Saudi Arabia, Al Dhawahiri is Egyptian
and Al
Zarqawi is Jordanian. Which countries in the region are America's best
allies? Let's see now… did you guess Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt?! Fantastic!
You win a trip to… Falloojeh!! (And no- it doesn't count if you give
Saudi Arabia a little slap on the wrists and poke Egypt in the ribs- you're
still buddies).
Berg
met with shady Iraqi: At Philly.com (reg.req.)
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US
guards 'filmed beatings' at terror camp: Senator urges action as
Briton reveals Guantanamo abuse. From the Guardian (U.K.)
Dozens of videotapes of American guards allegedly engaged in brutal attacks
on Guantanamo Bay detainees have been stored and catalogued at the camp,
an investigation by The Observer has revealed.
The disclosures, made in an interview with Tarek Dergoul, the fifth British
prisoner freed last March, who has been too traumatised to speak until now,
prompted demands last night by senior politicians on both sides of the Atlantic
to make the videos available immediately....
Liz Donovan offers Cageprisoners.com
- serving the caged prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Its prisoners page
has names of more than 450 prisoners, and photos of about 70, most pictured
in happier times. The "About
us" page says the site is run by volunteers not aligned
with any Islamic organization.
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Iraq
Dispatches: Correspondent Dahr Jamail reports from Baghdad.:
Howard Kurtz writes today in the Washington Post (Scrambling
for Cover -- and Coverage: Spiraling Iraq Violence Keeps Reporters Away
From Action) that "Many journalists now spend
much of their time inside the capital's 'green zone,' which is
protected by the U.S. military."
It's been apparent for some time that American journalists, few of whom
appear or are Arabic, have a hard time blending in where news is happening
in Iraq. (Back on March 19, when CNN and other U.S. media were breathlessly
reporting that a high-ranking Al Quaeda figure was trapped in fighting on
the Pakistan border, Agence-Press France and Reuters were already reporting
he had gotten away. (See the Iraq
news: Best sources page.)
So it was interesting to discover today that a freelancer -- 35-year-old
Alaskan Dahr Jamail -- is regularly reporting from Iraq. And the Hartford
Courant
includes him in a story (reg.req.): Mainstream
Media Scooped On Prison Story
The nation and much of the mainstream U.S. media were stunned by the recent
revelations of abuse of Iraqi detainees by U.S. military personnel at the
Abu Ghraib prison.
But for Dahr Jamail, the disclosures were no surprise.
Jamail, a free-lance writer from Alaska, for months has been interviewing
Iraqis who say they have been abused by U.S. forces and telling their stories
in dispatches on alternative news Internet sites, in reports for Pacifica
Radio "Flashpoints" and even on noncommercial radio station WHUS
in Storrs.
"I started hearing about these abuses when I arrived in Iraq in November
2003," Jamail said this week in a telephone interview from Baghdad,
where he's writing for The NewStandard website. "It was the same as
what we're hearing now.
"Any journalist on the ground, if you're talking to people, is going
to hear these stories."
Jamail originally reported
Related: Jeff
Jarvis points to the Iraqi bloggers as reporters, although
what they can report is usually only what they can see.
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Pentagon:
Hersh report 'journalist malpractice': From CNN:
Officials in the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community Monday flatly
denied a New
Yorker magazine report that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
approved a clandestine unit to crack down on terrorists held at Iraq's Abu
Ghraib prison, where inmates were abused.
The article, by Seymour Hersh, quotes a former intelligence official saying
the unit's instructions were, "Grab whom you must. Do what you want." The
report also says the CIA pulled its people from involvement in interrogations
at the prison in October "because it was out of control."
"This is the most hysterical piece of journalist malpractice I have
ever observed," said Lawrence DiRita, spokesman for Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld, in response to Hersh's report. ...
Advice
Rejected: JAG Lawyers Say Political Appointees Ignored Their Warnings
on Prisoner Treatment. From ABC News,
..."If we — 'we' being the uniformed lawyers — had been
listened to, and what we said put into practice, then these abuses would
not have
occurred," said Rear Admiral Don Guter (ret.), the Navy Judge Advocate
General from 2000 to 2002.
Specifically, JAG officers say they have been marginalized by Douglas Feith,
undersecretary of defense for policy, and William Haynes II, the Pentagon's
general counsel, whom President Bush has nominated for a judgeship on the
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
In an interview with ABCNEWS, Feith denied any tensions whatsoever with
JAG officers. He also denied that military lawyers disagreed with rules
and practices coming from his office that pertained to detainees. "That's
not true in my experience or my understanding of what's happened," Feith
said.
But asked about some of these issues during the Senate Armed Services
Committee hearing Tuesday, the current Army JAG, Maj. Gen. Thomas J. Romig,
was less
dismissive, calling the charges "troubling" and saying, "We're
trying to get to the bottom of it."
Under condition of anonymity, one current JAG officer told ABCNEWS that
for the last two years, "the military lawyers have always been the ones
speaking for greater protections and recognitions of rights for detainees — and
the political appointees have argued for no recognition of rights and careful
control of the process. That's an argument, to date, that the political
appointees have won."
Several JAG sources report that, to form the rules for military tribunals,
the Pentagon initially created a "Tiger Team" of Army JAG officers.
But that team was soon disbanded by Haynes and the political appointee
attorneys took over the process. JAG sources interpreted the move as being
the result
of military lawyers' insistence on greater rights and protections for detainees
than what Haynes, Feith and others wanted to permit. ...
... Matters got so frustrating that in May and October 2003, eight senior
JAG
officers took the rare step of going outside the chain of command to meet
secretly with the New York City Bar Association, warning of a "disaster
waiting to happen".
"They felt that there had been a conscious effort to create an atmosphere
of
legal ambiguity surrounding these detention facilities, and that it had
been done
to give interrogators the broadest possible latitude in their conduct of
operations," Scott Horton, former chair of the New York City Bar
Association's Committee on International Human Rights, told ABCNEWS.
Horton's meeting with the JAG officers was first reported by Salon.com....
Related: Atrocities
in Iraq: 'I killed innocent people for our government'. An interview
at the Sacramento Bee with a former Marine:
For nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say gung-ho,
Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one of the most grueling
indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine boot camp.
The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer carnage of the U.S.
invasion, touched his conscience and transformed him forever. He was honorably
discharged with full severance last Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown,
Waynsville, N.C.
When I talked with Massey last week, he expressed his remorse at the civilian
loss of life in incidents in which he himself was involved....
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2004
Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race: Entries must be amphibious,
human powered works of art. Lots of great pictures with this one.
The most innovative design of 2004 was the Cirque de Sore Legs, a 3-car
circus train from Frank Conlan and the gang who brought us the the Mad Hatter's
Teapot in 2003. The engine included a bell and smokestack (complete with
smoke) and two engineers; the second car contained a lion tamer and a lion
(and looked just like a giant, amphibious box of animal crackers); and the
third car contained a showgirl and a circus bear. Not surprisingly, they
won the People's Choice Award. The eminent Hobart Brown also selected the
Cirque for the Spirit of the Glorious Founder Award.
The main
page reveals more about the abovementioned Hobart Brown:
Each May, Kinetic Sculptures from the eastern United States
convene at the American Visionary Art Museum (AVAM) on Baltimore's Inner
Harbor for the East Coast Championship race. A few weeks later, the World
Championships are held in Arcata, California. Folks have been racing in
California since 1969, when a Ferndale artist named Hobart Brown made a
few "artistic
improvements" to his son's tricycle, and a friendly wager led to a
race among weird sculptures, and the concept has been spreading ever since.
In
1999, the first Kinetic Sculpture Race (KSR) was held in Baltimore, sponsored
by AVAM.
AVAM looks pretty cool, too.
Yet another
page about the race:
KSR is also a serious sport:
The race course is long and grueling, the racers in top shape, (well most
hope to be, and there the fun begins). The machines are subjected to extreme
stresses and many have up to 106 gears using top-of-the-line bicycle components
as well as recycled ones that have been custom welded and adapted to meet
the need.
Here's the Baltimore Sun's report.
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Flying
car more economical than SUV: NextFest in San Francisco
featured a flying car, an "invisibility cloak" and a game that
rewards the person who cares least about winning, according
to BBC. The flying car stole the show. Here's
Andrew Orlowski for The Register (U.K.):
The M400 needs 35 clear feet to take off but thanks to its
770 hp engine can whiz to 365 mph - cruise control kicks in at 326 mph -
and climb at 6,400 feet per minute. You may hear it before you see it: it
emits a rather noisy 65 dba at 500 feet. Interestingly, with a fuel consumption
of 20 miles to the gallon on the road, it's rather more economical than a
Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) and looks positively eco-friendly compared to
a Hummer.
(Paul) Moller said that today's economics give each M400 a theoretical
price tag of around half a million dollars, but in volume production it
could
drop
to $300,000 and in really large volumes to below $50,000. At which point,
uh, look out!
Jason Schultz (Law Geek) photoblogged NextFest.
Here's the San Francisco Chronicle's report.
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Color
Blender: From Eric Meyer, very cool. You choose a yellow (red, blue,
whatever) for your web page, but you want it a little paler. Choose the
yellow, choose
white,
and you'll
see four progressively paler versions of your yellow. Any two colors can
be so blended.
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Glitch
forces change in vote audits: This is a follow to Friday's
story (Count
Crisis? Elections official warns of glitches that may scramble vote auditing)
that reported, "The Miami-Dade County Commission's elections subcommittee
has scheduled meetings today and Friday to discuss the issues
raised in the
memo."
The memo: Orlando Suarez, division manager of the county's
Enterprise Technology Services Department, wrote that the system is "unusable" for
auditing, recounting, or certifying an election. Suarez came to his conclusion
after analyzing one precinct in a North Miami Beach municipal runoff election
held May 21, 2003.
The Herald (reg.req.) reports on the outcome of the meetings:
The company that makes the touch-screen voting machines for
Miami-Dade and Broward counties said Friday that they will have to work around
a glitch in the machines' auditing system because the software that would
correct it will not be certified by the state in time for the fall elections.
Related: Elections
supervisor might back touch-screen vote test: From the Palm Beach Post,
Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore said
Thursday she might support some type of preelection testing of the county's
touch-screen voting machines to reassure doubters of paperless voting.
"If it's a controlled test environment, I might consider it, depending
on what's involved. But nobody's ever brought that to my attention," LePore
said after about 30 protesters stood outside the elections office to criticize
electronic voting.
The group, calling itself the Palm Beach Coalition for Election Reform,
called for paper receipts to accompany touch-screen voting machines as
well as "independent auditing and security testing of the touch-screen
machines."
The testing should be similar to Maryland's hiring of an outside technology
consultant to evaluate that state's Diebold voting machines, said Kevin Aplin,
a member of the Green Party of Florida.
Unfortunately, testing the machines will not reveal malicious
code intended to defraud voters. The test would run without the code executing.
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Cicada
Cam at the Washington Post. Yup, a Beltway bug watch.
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Anti-Castro pilots' kin meet: Strange tale, strange reunion. At the Miami
Herald (reg.req.)
NO NAME KEY - Eighteen years after her ace pilot father vanished over Cuba,
shot down during the doomed Bay of Pigs invasion, Janet Weininger received
a message from Fidel Castro: Her father's frozen body was in a Havana morgue,
and the Cuban president was willing to give it back.
For Weininger, the return of Pete Ray's body marked the end of a desperate
decadelong search in which she wrote 200 letters to Castro and scoured Little
Havana's streets for Cuban pilots. It also set in motion her lifelong quest
to help children of covert operatives lost during the Cold War piece together
the puzzle of their missing parents' lives.
''It's a long, lonely search to go against the government, the family who
you love, the Cuban government,'' said Weininger, 48.
This weekend, at a fishing camp on No Name Key, Weininger gathered with
four other women whose fathers or relatives had been pilots in, and victims
of, Cuba's bloody revolution more than 40 years ago and the United States'
efforts to quash it.
These daughters of the disappeared traveled from Maine, San Francisco, Los
Angeles and Bermuda, drawn together by their parallel histories and unanswered
questions haunting most of their lives: Were their fathers mercenaries, as
the CIA claimed? Or were they covert operatives hired by the U.S. government
to secretly take Castro down?...
via Liz Donovan.
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A Home Test for Parallel Universes at allsci. Really.
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