Subterranean Homepage News

June 4, 2004, 5:08 p.m. -- (Last week's weblog)

 

Beautiful game: Quest for the Rest is reminiscent of the stunning Samorost that came out last October from the Czechoslovakian Amanita Designs Turns out it is from the same source. Jakub Dvorský is the developer who designed Quest for the band Polyphonic Spree. (You can access both games from here.)

Wicked Small Games (which hosts both games) interviewed Dvorský last month:

3)What do you think is the biggest limitation to making the games you want to make, is there one?
The biggest limitations for me is time and money of course:) Some are upset that Samorost is so short, yes I wanted to make it longer, but as I was working alone I wasn't able to manage more in time I had (I made it almost 1 year while studying and earning money). I'd like to make only noncommercial games like Samorost but I need some money for my living.

7)Favorite game by someone else.
I like www.yetisports.org

9)If you could make any type of game with zero limitations, what kind of browser based game would you make?
Something like samorost, but much longer and with original music from Amon Tobin.

Yet another: Rocketman for Nike.

Somebody please adopt this man so he can make long, beautiful puzzle games like these.

Final Easy: Flash game, requires manual dexterity with a mouse not to electrocute yourself in this maze. Compared to what's above, this is a penny arcade game.
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Pictures in Baghdad is a photoblog from a family in Iraq. The photos seem remarkably normal -- "Persian" carpets and an old gramophone in a shop (at right), a nut shop, mom at work, a watermelon stand, architecture, gas lines, flowers in the garden.
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Meta-Efficient: A guide to the most efficient things in the world. It's a well-designed blog, with lots of photos, that reminds me of the Whole Earth Catalog:

What We Cover
We have information on Lighting, Refrigeration, Stoves, Washers & Dryers, Televisions, Cooling, Heating, Air Conditioning, Indoor Plants, Toilets, Water Filters, Rain Water Harvesting, Hot Water Systems, Deep Cycle Batteries, Rechargeable Batteries and Paint.

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Nokia unveils mid-air messaging: BBC,

Nokia is making a mobile that lets you write short text messages in mid-air.

The messages are written using a row of LEDs fitted on the rear cover of Nokia's forthcoming 3220 phone.

A motion sensor in the phone makes the lights blink in a sequence that spells out letters when the handset is waved in the air.

A trick of human vision turns the sequence of letters into a message that hangs in the air. The phone is due to go on sale in the summer of this year.

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Yahoo plays favorites with some adware: eWeek reports,

When it comes to blocking intrusive Internet software, Yahoo Inc.'s new Anti-Spy gives adware the benefit of the doubt.

The beta version of the spyware-fighting toolbar add-on, which Yahoo released last week, doesn't default to detect adware—a category of software in which Yahoo's paid search division has a financial stake.

Instead, users who want to identify adware in their systems via Anti-Spy must check a box each time they conduct a scan....

It doesn't work in Mozilla, anyway.
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OBL stars in Rumsfeld pillow talk: BBC reports,

America's number-one fugitive isn't usually the subject of pillow talk - except for the US defence secretary.

Donald Rumsfeld has admitted that his wife often needles him about the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden - often just after they wake up.

"When I walk out of the bedroom in the morning, my wife frequently rolls over and says, 'Where's UBL?'" he said, referring to the spelling "Usama".

Mr Rumsfeld insisted the search for Bin Laden was as concentrated as ever.

Speaking to sailors and marines aboard the USS Essex in Singapore, Mr Rumsfeld did not reveal how he responds to his wife's teaser...

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D-Day: The Hard-Won Beaches of Normandy at the Newseum. Front pages, memories, a radio report. Well done. Thanks to my colleague Sean Polay for the link.
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June 3, 2004, 6:35 p.m.

Breaking: CNN's David Ensor is reporting that James Pavitt, CIA Deputy Director of Operations -- the man in charge of the spies -- will announce his resignation tomorrow morning. Pavitt, whom Ensor says will leave this summer, has spent more than 30 years at the CIA.

A glimpse of the Baghdad art scene from Christopher Albritton of Back to Iraq 3.0

Albritton describes the untitled work at right, by Hossam Aasal, as "the only overtly political piece." Carved of wood, it appears to be an eagle nailed to a cross. (Click the image to enlarge it.)

Thumbnails of some works currently showing at Akkad Gallery.
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Bilderberg: The ultimate conspiracy theory, at the BBC. The group's 50th annual meeting begins today.

The Bilderberg group, an elite coterie of Western thinkers and power-brokers, has been accused of fixing the fate of the world behind closed doors. As the organisation marks its 50th anniversary, rumours are more rife than ever....

What sets Bilderberg apart from other high-powered get-togethers, such as the annual World Economic Forum (WEF), is its mystique.

Not a word of what is said at Bilderberg meetings can be breathed outside. No reporters are invited in and while confidential minutes of meetings are taken, names are not noted.

The shadowy aura extends further - the anonymous answerphone message, for example; the fact that conference venues are kept secret. The group, which includes luminaries such as Henry Kissinger and former UK chancellor Kenneth Clarke, does not even have a website.

There is, however, a rich, scary website about the group, which reveals the meeting this year is at the Grand Hotel des Iles Borromees in Stresa, Italy, today through Sunday.

And it has the list of attendees, which includes Americans Sen. John Edwards (getting foreign policy creds?), Mrs. Bill Gates, former Christian Coalition director Ralph Reed, Richard Perle ( Pentagon policy advisor who resigned in February), former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke, old Clinton friend Vernon Jordan, Doinald Graham (heir to the Washington Post), Rumsfeld undersecretary Douglas J.Feith and Max Boot, Features Editor, Wall Street Journal.

Since President Bush leaves for Rome tomorrow, he might drop by, too.

Here's another suspicious rundown of the Bilderberg group
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Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel Tips and Tricks: Interesting. " Update your firmware on the Canon Digital Rebel to make it run like the more expensive 10D" is how kottke.org headlines it. At your own risk.
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Microsoft's Sacred Cash Cow: A former Microsoftie says addiction to Windows revenue, mediocre products, and missed opportunities could doom Seattle’s most successful company.

This is by Jeff Reifman, a former Microsoft technology manager, in Seattle Weekly:

Why are Microsoft products so endlessly frustrating to use? Even techno-geeks like me get annoyed by Windows. I’m tired of spending the first 10 minutes of my day rebooting just so I can get to work. Microsoft Outlook 2003, the latest version of the company’s e-mail and calendar software, hangs for me about once a day, requiring me to restart my PC. I also have a problem with Word 2003: Whenever I bullet a line of text, every line in the document gets a bullet. Asking Windows to shut down is more of a request than a command—it might, it might not. And recently, Internet Explorer stopped opening for me.

I know I’m not alone. If you’re like me, you’ve invested in technology to become more efficient and productive but mutter about the many frustrations of the digital lifestyle. Technology is my hobby as well as my job, so I regularly ponder why software giant Microsoft Corp., which has more than $56 billion in cash, hasn’t solved more of these problems.

I've had a crisis of faith. Last month I went out and bought a Macintosh G5 and began using the new Mac operating system, OS X. It has been a breath of badly needed fresh air after Windows. ... in the first five minutes on my new Mac, I was surfing the Internet, sending e-mail, and ripping a CD. OS X has been a breath of badly needed fresh air after Windows.

This made me wonder about Microsoft’s willingness to innovate and compete. Why are Microsoft products still so difficult to use and so unreliable? Why is the company improving them so slowly? Is Microsoft losing its competitive edge? Has the company seen its best days?

The Web’s phenomenal growth has driven a number of fundamental changes. And from my vantage, at least, Microsoft seems to have overlooked the most important of those trends. It made a series of missteps, and it’s not clear if it has learned from them. In protecting Windows and Office revenues, Microsoft has innovated less quickly than it could have. The company relies on the same strategy that helped it years ago come to dominate the personal-computer market with the Windows operating system, despite mounting evidence that its customers are looking for a new approach. Competitors such as Linux and Google are gaining, and Microsoft seems unprepared for the road ahead....

Related: Microsoft patents the double click. Why didn't I think of that?
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mp3 blogs: defining fair use. A large list of audio blogs.
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Bill Maher on Larry King last night (transcript). Excerpts:

MAHER:...sometimes I watch the news and I see these brave people (soldiers in Iraq). And then I watch regular television, especially reality television, and you see people who are -- American citizens who are not asked to sacrifice, obviously, because they're selfish and peevish and shallow and greedy. And every show -- every reality show is based on cruelty -- You're fired. You're not good enough. You can't sing. Get off the island. You're not hot enough. And I ask myself, why is this first group of Americans defending the second group of Americans? I really ask that question....

And,

MAHER:...I do think that President Bush relies on hypocrisy. You know, even if you give him a credit that he's a nice guy and this was a sincere effort, you know, it's one thing to run an election based on two-dimensional platitudes, like, They hate us for our freedom. It's another thing to send men to die for a platitude like that.

I honestly think that a lot of these people who have died over there, perhaps all of them, will have died in vain because they screwed up this plan so badly that we'll never know if democracy can take hold in Iraq. I mean, under the best conditions, this might not have worked. But considering how badly they screwed it up from the day after that they pulled Saddam's statue down, I don't think it's possible that democracy is going to be able to grow there, and then these people will have died in vain.

And,

KING: Every vote he gets is a vote -- potential -- it's not getting a Bush vote, is it?

MAHER: That's not true. It's just like in television. Sometimes they play a show that people really like to see, and they say, Well, you know, it didn't hurt "CSI." It brought in a whole new audience. In other words, they -- some powerhouse show ran up against it, and it wasn't that people left "CSI." The same people who were going to watch it watched it. But this brought in a new audience. I think it's the same thing with Ralph Nader. Plus, nobody I know who voted Ralph Nader last time, including myself -- and I do love Ralph -- is going to vote for him this time.

KING: Why do you still love him, if his ego appears to have run wild?

MAHER: Well, I can't help it. I mean, Ralph has done so many amazing...

KING: Great American.

MAHER: ... amazing things for this country. I do think he probably shouldn't run this time just because it's so important. But I think everybody last time who thought, Oh, Gore and Bush, you know, Coke and Pepsi -- you know, we realized it wasn't Coke and Pepsi, it was Coke and Jesus juice. And that's the choice we got, and that's who we got.

And much more...

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2:34 p.m.
Chalabi: Tenet 'Behind Charges' of Leaks to Iran: This is getting very strange. From AP,

NAJAF, Iraq - Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi accused CIA director George Tenet on Thursday of being responsible for allegations that the former exile leader passed intelligence information to Iran.

...Chalabi told reporters that Tenet "was behind the charges against me that claimed that I gave intelligence information to Iran. I denied these charges and I will deny them again."

In Washington, a U.S. law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the FBI (news - web sites) is examining whether Pentagon officials who had frequent contacts with Chalabi may have leaked sensitive information that U.S. intelligence had broken Iran's secret communications codes. ...

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1:34 p.m.
Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 trailer is online: The film open June 25th nationwide. Very heavy traffic on this. You have choices of three sizes of either QuickTime or WindowsMedia. After failures with both large versions, I finally got in by choosing the small Windows Media version.
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Fed Agencies Sued For Withholding Torture Docs: Reuters via The Memory Hole which now has a blog. (The Memory Hole hosted 288 photographs showing soldiers' remains arriving home and 73 photos of the Columbia astronauts at Dover Air Force Base released by the Air Force in response to the Memory Hole's Freedom of Information Act request.)

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Civil-rights and veterans groups on Wednesday sued the U.S. government for what they said was illegally withholding records about American military abuse of prisoners held in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and other locations.

The suit, filed in Manhattan federal court, charges that the U.S. departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and State have failed to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the groups last year. Other defendants in the suit include the FBI and CIA. ...

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Terror police quizzed guitarist over lyrics: From This is London,

The guitarist in a rock tribute act was quizzed as a terror suspect after sending a text message containing lyrics from a song by punk rock act the Clash to the wrong person.

Band member Mike Devine, 35, the bass guitarist in a Clash tribute group called London Calling, intended to text the lyric from the band's song Tommy Gun to singer Reg Shaw - but sent the message to the wrong number....

...It read: "How about this for Tommy Gun? OK - SO LET'S AGREE ABOUT THE PRICE AND MAKE IT ONE JET AIRLINER FOR TEN PRISONERS."

The bass guitarist, from Birchall Road, Bristol, said he was asked to explain what the message meant.

Mr Devine said the detective looked "puzzled" when he was told they were the lyrics from the 1970s song Tommy Gun by The Clash.

"We were having trouble working them out but I found them on the internet," Mr Devine explained. "I was just texting Reg our singer to see if he thought that they sounded right."

The Special Branch officer seemed "a little embarrassed" when he left, Mr Devine added.

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Audio of Enron tapes added to yesterday's Enron transcript item.

June 2, 2004, 7:21 p.m.

Breaking: AP: Bush Consults Lawyer in CIA Leak Case: WASHINGTON - President Bush has consulted an outside lawyer in case he needs to retain him in the grand jury investigation of who leaked the name of a covert CIA (news - web sites) operative last year, the White House said Wednesday...
Earlier: Probe Wants Air Force One Records(CBS News, March 5, 2004)

Citizen journalism: A reader volunteers her concert photos. Providence photographer Regan Teti emailed me yesterday,

Hi Sheila,
I'm not sure if you are the correct person to contact, but I am a Providence photographer and I will be attending the Great High Mountain Tour show in Kingston tonight and shooting the event. Because I noticed that projo.com had an article about it, I was wondering if you might need some photos to run tomorrow? I shoot all digital, so getting the photos to you would be quite simple. Do you have any submission guidelines?

I emailed back,

Thanks for contacting me.

If you shoot it, we'll make a slideshow in the morning and credit you, but we don't buy freelance work.

Is fleeting fame enough, or do you need to sell them?

Regan was happy with fleeting fame, so here are her photos of the Great High Mountain Tour. The one at right -- of Alison Krauss and Union Station -- and a link to the rest, are on the projo.com cover right now.

You can do this too. If you have good photos of a local event, let us know about them. We need only the who, what, when, where of the event, and captions for your photos. If there are a lot of them, we'll make a slideshow and credit you, of course.

We're also talking about having a panel of restaurant reviewers -- people who like to write about food and go out to eat a lot. (We know there's a group that visits every reviewed restaurant the day of the review.)

If you write clearly about food, conveying both a good sense of what we'll find there and your own enthusiasm for the restaurant, give it a shot. We've set up a form you can paste your review into here.

We're also thinking about a projo MeetUp for those interested in reviewing and photographing regularly.

Your thoughts? Please send 'em.
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Giving away a million: Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is previewing/promoting his Benefactor reality show on his blog and in a video clip.

The clip looks like more nubile young things and the class clown in a house. I had hoped for a little more substance there. John Beresford Tipton was a serious guy.
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Surf's up, dude: As the Cape goes wireless, a 'hotspot' may be easier to find than a latte:

The growth of wireless networks on the Cape and islands has been fueled by low installation costs and the wish to lure customers. If hotspots earn a few extra bucks in revenue, all the better.

Last weekend, Mashpee Commons officially launched its wireless network, which covers more than 70 percent of the outdoor mall, including many stores and restaurants.

Access is free, says Will Rapp, vice president of Cape.com, the local Internet service provider that installed the network. Cape.com customers can stay logged in continually; customers of other ISPs are allowed to log in free in for an hour at a time.

"The summer on the Cape is beautiful; get outside and enjoy the sun and surf," says Rapp, referring to the World Wide Web, not the Atlantic Ocean.

The four antennas that distribute the signal cost Cape.com in the "low thousands," says Rapp. The company installed the hotspot primarily as a public service, he says, though it also serves as a marketing tool. Signs and stickers indicating that the mall has wireless access will credit Cape.com.

The company also plans to launch wireless on Hyannis town green to coincide with the unveiling of the new Walkway to the Sea this summer. The signal will be available in the cluster of shops and cafes on Main Street near the green, as well. And Rapp would like to build a network outside Provincetown Town Hall.

The story also notes that charging for wi-fi is not generally a good idea:

...Two weeks ago, the Christy's of Cape Cod convenience store at the corner of Bearses Way and Route 28 in Hyannis, which includes a Dunkin' Donuts, pulled the plug on its network. In six months of operation, it failed to attract a single user.

Pat McKeown, executive vice president of Christy's of Cape Cod, said the company partnered on the service with a local access provider that covered all start-up and operating costs. Customers were asked to pay a daily usage fee with a credit card number submitted online....

... The apparent failure at Christy's and success at the Nantucket Boat Basin comes as little surprise to Bernt Ostergaard, a technology trends analyst with Forrester Research in Denmark.

In a study on wireless networks, he suggests demand has lagged for companies that hoped to profit from building networks and charging fees to access them. Two years ago, a company called Cometa promised to build 20,000 pay-for-access hotspots nationally by now. So far, it's created only 300, according to his study.

Free wireless is the way to go.

One city has turned its entire downtown into a wi-fi hot spot: WAGZone is a 24-block wi-fi cloud over downtown Athens, Ga.

I'd love to see that happen here. Downtown Providence is small enough for such a cloud -- and it would encourage people to use the public spaces even when events are not scheduled. Tourists would love it.
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Autoblog: It's about cars. It's slick. It's from Jason Calacanis's Weblogs Inc. Network.
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Enron Traders Caught On Tape / Transcript of the tapes (pdf) (use your projo password here if you're asked to register). Update: Audio of the tapes.
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3:04 p.m.
Constituent mail is trashed, writes congressional staffer sacked for sex blog: Jessica Cutler, sacked from her job as a staff assistant for Senator Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, after her blog about her sex life got linked by Washington blogger Wonkette, speaks her piece in the Guardian (U.K.). And here's the news from it:

...If I get a book deal, that means I will actually have to write a book, which means I will actually have to do some work to make a living, which is bitterly ironic, since I had the easiest job in the world before I got sacked.

I opened mail all day (which is why you should never bother to write your representatives in government: somebody like me reads your letters). And then I either threw the letters in the garbage or I would make fun of them with co-workers. In retrospect, that job was perfect for me.

But letter-writing is a huge waste of time, energy and tax dollars, on everybody's part. I realise that I played my part in this waste, so I would like to take this opportunity to put an end to it by telling you to please stop writing letters to politicians. It makes absolutely no difference to anybody.

Also, stop calling their offices. It's so annoying.

She apparently lied about her aage -- 26, not 24 -- and about having a degree from Syracuse University, as well. Who knows if any of the rest of her tale is true, either.

To everybody graduating this month who would love to qualify for a job -- any job -- in a congressional office: Life is not fair.
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Hotel Habita: In Polanco, Mexico City,

The architects converted a five-story 1950's apartment building, located on a commercial street lined with retail stores and office buildings, into a thirty-six room boutique hotel, with new services and amenities such as a swimming pool, gym, sauna, bar, and restaurant.

The old structure achieved a new identity because of its new wrapper, a frosted glass envelope composed of rectangular glass panels, which exists beyond the original facade. This “air buffer” not only controls heat gains, eliminating the need for heating and cooling systems, it also serves as an acoustical device and mediates the view while providing privacy. Sandwiched between the new and old facades are the original balconies and new corridors....

...At night, the entire building is transformed into a lantern with a changing checkerboard pattern of illumination, controlled by the room occupants.

Many more photos on the link.

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Yuppies find peace in hippie hub:

HEBDEN BRIDGE, England (Reuters) - If you're going to Hebden Bridge, you no longer need to wear flowers in your hair.

Times have changed -- but although the beads and incense have gone, the spirit that has made this town a hub of alternative Britain remains.

For three decades, the former mining town in West Yorkshire has been a trend barometer: home to waves of hippies, modern pagans, lesbian single mothers and lately, downshifting professionals.

Urban slickers in search of the slow lane are switching city life for love, peace and friendship in a town where all their green needs are met.

"Now it's people with money moving here: different-thinking professionals -- teachers, doctors and architects," said Dave Brooks, who co-founded the town's housing co-operative.

Nestled between lush green hills, Hebden Bridge is home to about 5,000 people who are served by three organic shops, a recycling and environmental education centre, a tree-planting charity, a housing co-operative, and countless healers, yoga teachers and civic action groups....

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Now there's a robot that irons shirts: Ingenious.

The main objective of the Dressman robot is to dry and press shirts. On placing a damp shirt on the ironing figure, this dummy inflates with hot air in its interior, and thus puffs the shirt up, removing creases drying the garment (it has to be previously wet and undergone a spin-dry in a washing machine).

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Report from Europe: My "Canadian correspondent," Eric Lilius, is back from a tour of Old World family in Europe, and it's good to hear from him again. He says he's catching up now on a month of this blog. That could take a while:

Hallstein, Austria

We have just come back from over a month visiting friends in family in Europe. I have relatives in Vienna, Sweden and Finland. Carolynn has friends in Berlin and Basel. We took night trains and ferries to make the connections. We had a great time!!

I am still in culture shock. Almost every car I saw was half the size of what I see here, gas was well over a dollar a litre. ..sometimes 2, power producing windmills, solar panels, free museums on Sunday, plazas full of people,not one ATV, many streets that had no cars, trucks and diesel buses that burn cleaner than gas cars in North America, public transportation that worked..on time and frequent.........

He also sends along a pointer to The Word Spy. "This Web site is devoted to lexpionage, the sleuthing of new words and phrases."

Great browsing. My favorite: furkid n. A pet treated as though it were one's child. Also: fur-kid, fur kid.

Odd thing: "Extreme ironing" is new here, citing Journal writer Bryan Rourke's May 22 story about it. (reg.req.) I blogged it here on May 3, 2002, so it's been a slow build to being the latest thing..
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Drug Discounts Beginning Tuesday, but Sign-Ups Lag: NYT on Monday.

Fascinating graphic from a partisan source (Joe Hoeffel, running against Sen. Arlen Specter R-Pa.), so give it the hairy eyeball, but this may explain why "sign-ups lag."

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June 1, 2004, 7:18 p.m.

Howard Dean's first new syndicated column: Electronic Voting – Not Ready For Prime Time

...Without any accountability or transparency, even if these machines work, we cannot check whether they are in fact working reliably. The American public should not tolerate the use of paperless e-voting machines until at least the 2006 election, allowing time to prevent ongoing errors and failures with the technology. One way or another, every voter should be able to check that an accurate paper record has been made of their vote before it is recorded.

Both Democrats and Republicans have a serious interest in fixing this potentially enormous blow to democracy. A bipartisan bill, sponsored by Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), is one of several paper trail bills in the House and Senate and it should be passed as soon as possible. A grassroots movement for verified voting, led by organizations like VerifiedVoting.org, is gaining momentum nationwide.

There is nothing partisan about the survival of our democracy or its legitimacy. We cannot and must not put the success of one party or another above the good of our entire country and all our people. To the governments of the fifty states, Republican or Democrat, I ask you to put paperless e-voting machines on the shelf until 2006 or until they are reliable and will allow recounts. In a democracy you always count the votes no matter who wins. To abandon that principle is to abandon America.

There's nothing new here to regular readers of this column. But getting the word out to the mainstream is imperative, so Dean's choice of an important bipartisan theme for the preview column that will be available to syndicator Cagle Cartoons' more than 600 newspapers shows his news judgment is excellent.

Editor & Publisher has behind-the-scene details.

Related: Cagle's cartoon blog at Slate

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Pros and cons of John Kerry's top 20 vice-presidential candidates. Funny:

4. Bill Clinton, former President

Pro: Oh man, that would be awesome—could you imagine? He'd be all like Yeah, I'm back, so suck on this, y'all and everyone would be all No way and he'd be all Way
Con: None

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Drivers Want Code to Their Cars: In Wired,

Rachel Seymour, a college student from Portland, Oregon, has had her 2002 Kia Spectra serviced 12 times for a Check Engine light problem. Each time, she's forced to take it to a Kia dealership, where a technician hooks her car up to a computer, runs a battery of tests and charges her $120 to diagnose and repair the same problem: a loose gas cap.

Seymour said she has no problem screwing a gas cap into place, and that the light has even come on while she's driving home from getting her car serviced. But the dealership has stubbornly stood by its computer diagnosis, saying the car's sensors are detecting a loose gas cap and triggering the Check Engine light -- a "consumer error" that is not covered under the car's warranty. ...

... A bill floating through Congress could help people like Seymour by forcing automakers to share diagnostic codes with car buyers and independent mechanics. The Motor Vehicle Owners' Right to Repair Act would give Seymour the means to determine whether the Check Engine light signaled another gas cap vagary or a major oil leak. The legislation would also allow Seymour to choose an independent -- and possibly cheaper -- repair shop instead of being forced to go to the dealership.

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From Bush, Unprecedented Negativity: Scholars Say Campaign Is Making History With Often-Misleading Attacks

This is the most-linked story in the blogosphere right now (and the blogosphere normally leans right). Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post go beyond fact-checking political ads (one of the watchdog functions of the press) and look at the big picture:

It was a typical week in the life of the Bush reelection machine....

The charges were all tough, serious -- and wrong, or at least highly misleading. Kerry did not question the war on terrorism, has proposed repealing tax cuts only for those earning more than $200,000, supports wiretaps, has not endorsed a 50-cent gasoline tax increase in 10 years, and continues to support the education changes, albeit with modifications.

Scholars and political strategists say the ferocious Bush assault on Kerry this spring has been extraordinary, both for the volume of attacks and for the liberties the president and his campaign have taken with the facts. Though stretching the truth is hardly new in a political campaign, they say the volume of negative charges is unprecedented -- both in speeches and in advertising.

Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush's campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads -- or 27 percent of his total. The figures were compiled by The Washington Post using data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group of the top 100 U.S. markets. Both campaigns said the figures are accurate.

The story notes that Kerry has shaded the truth, too, but not to the same degree:

Kerry, too, has made his own misleading statements and exaggerations. For example, he said in a speech last week about Iraq: "They have gone it alone when they should have assembled a whole team." That is not true. There are about 25,000 allied troops from several nations, particularly Britain, in Iraq. Likewise, Kerry said several times last week that Bush has spent $80 million on negative and misleading ads -- a significant overstatement. Kerry also suggested several times last week that Bush opposed increasing spending on several homeland defense programs; in fact, Bush has proposed big increases in homeland security but opposed some Democratic attempts to increase spending even more in some areas. Kerry's rhetoric at rallies is also often much harsher and more personal than Bush's.

But Bush has outdone Kerry in the number of untruths, in part because Bush has leveled so many specific charges (and Kerry has such a lengthy voting record), but also because Kerry has learned from the troubles caused by Al Gore's misstatements in 2000. "The balance of misleading claims tips to Bush," Jamieson said, "in part because the Kerry team has been more careful."

Related: Bush Calls for 'Culture Change' in an interview with nine editors of Christianity Today magazine.
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Build a hovercraft in less than an hour: Can lift several adults, says the online instruction manual.

It's powered by a leaf blower or Shop-Vac.

HOW IT WORKS
The air inflates the plastic which pushes upon the floor and provides a ground-hugging "skirt." This lifts the entire hovercraft. The coffee-can lid provides "strain relief" for the plastic sheet, so that the inflated plastic doesn't tear loose from the center. The coffee can lid also lifts up the plastic so air can escape through the vent holes and pressurize the center donut-hole. The air then leaks along the floor and out from the edges of the hovercraft. This creates an "Air Film Bearing" which has very low friction. The plastic isn't touching the floor. Instead it is riding on a thin layer or "film" which is made out of air. Climb aboard!

Many more hovercraft possibiliities are linked at the end of the how-to.

This is from Science Hobbyist, which is full of tricks; it also has a Nikolai Tesla (autobiography) links page, and pointers to a lot about tesla coils.

Via Julia Set (Parsons School of Design) via Liz Donovan.
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Christopher Walken, cooking for reporters: The legendary actor is painfully shy and sensitive, but has to play a part in the starmaker machine. I suspect he's turned it into a role: He cooks for interviewers.

Odd Man In is a N.Y. Times magazine piece on Walken, in which he cooks scallops a l'orange for reporter Stephen Rodrick at his wife's Manhattan hideaway. (The couple lives in Connecticut.)

Then I saw that he cooked zucchini linguine and salmon with chutney for Andrew Goldman of the New York Observer in 2000.

Walken doesn't eat with reporters, though. He says he eats only once a day, around 7, because eating makes him sleepy.

Cooking with Chris has his recipes.
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Roberto Parada has painted Walken, one of this satirical illustrator's tamer works.

His subjects range from Snoop Doggy Dogg, George Bush, Johnny Cash, Homer Simpson, Donald Rumsfeld, Al Gore, The X_Files' Moulder and Scully as American Gothic and many more prints and paintings.

Seriously worth a look.

via Ye Olde Phart
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Why machines will not replace editors:

From Howard Kurtz, WaPo,

Big Misteak

Mort Kondracke's column in last week's Washington Times had some rather unorthodox names: Defense Secretary Donald Ruffed. Democratic candidate John Gerry. The Bookings Institutionalize. The Viet Congo. Deposed Iraqi dictator Adam Hussies and the country's national security adviser, Moonwalk al-Rubies.

"It's just one of those embarrassing things that makes you want to slit your wrists," says Commentary section editor Mary Lou Forbes. "It was fine when I saw it." The apparent culprit: a runaway computer spell-check program.

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Manhattan Stonehenge: The Astronomy Photo of the Day for May 28 shows the sun setting "precisely on the centerline of every street.":

This effect makes Manhattan a type of modern Stonehenge, although only aligned to about 30 degrees east of north. Were Manhattan's road grid perfectly aligned to east and west, today's effect would occur on the Vernal and Autumnal Equinox, March 21 and September 21, the only two days that the Sun rises and sets due east and west. ... the same thing happens every May 28 and July 12.

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2:16 p.m.
Kerry's alleged 'intern' tracks down the source of the slur: The Education of Alexandra Polier at New York Metro: Alexandra Polier was the journalist inaccurately described as an intern having an affair with John Kerry (she dated one of his staffers). That's her at right, in a photo by Robert Maxwell. To her credit, Polier not only describes the media assault, she also tries to track down the source of the slur:

It was becoming clearer: No single person had to have engineered this. First came a rumor about Kerry, then a small-time blogger* wrote about it, and his posting was read by journalists. They started looking into it, a detail that was picked up by Drudge—who, post-Monica, is taken seriously by other sites like Wonkette, which no political reporter can ignore. I was getting a better education in 21st-century reporting than I had gotten at Columbia J-school.

Yes, that's how a lot of it works these days. Buzz, buzz....

The more people I talked to, the more one supposed source kept coming up, a woman whom Drudge had called my “close friend.” I won’t mention her name here, but she had worked for a Republican lobbyist—Bill Jarrell, who runs a firm called Washington Strategies, gives money to Bush, and had been a top aide to Tom DeLay. I called her immediately to ask her if she had been telling people I’d had an affair with Kerry. “I may have said you knew him,” she said, sounding as if she were choosing her words with great care. “I may have said you had dinner with him. But I never said you had an affair!”

Then another reporter also said she’d told him I had slept with Kerry. I couldn’t believe one of my closest friends would tell such a thing—we went all the way back to tenth grade. I had even asked her to be a bridesmaid. She denied it again, then softened her position. “I may have told Bill that you knew Kerry. Look, I was once with you when you phoned Kerry’s office and then he called you right back. And I thought, How amazing, and I got excited and I told friends about it.” She started to cry. “I’m very, very sorry,” she sobbed. “If all this leads back to me, it wasn’t intentional.”

So how can all this happen?

Oddly, of all the stories written, the one that upset me most appeared in the New York Observer by Alexandra Wolfe, daughter of the novelist Tom Wolfe. Cobbling together information from the Web, she said I looked like Monica and had poor taste in movies, and compared me to Paris Hilton. I wept....

...We agreed to meet at Coffee Shop in Union Square. When she walked in, the first thing she said was, “You look nothing like Monica. You’re much prettier!” I mentioned how I’d been hurt by her story. She looked stricken. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I just didn’t think of you as a person. I thought of you as this Google creation, this Lara Croft character.”

This, too is common: the law of unintended consequences.

*Update, 2:16 p.m.: Cameron Barrett, the "small-time blogger" Polier mentions, has a clarification:

...When the "Kerry Intern" story broke on WatchBlog on February 6, I was still employed by the Clark campaign and was not involved in the editorial management of WatchBlog (in fact, I had shed my involvement in WatchBlog the previous October because I saw it as a potential conflict of interest)....

...I discovered the WatchBlog story, saw that Drudge had escalated the rumor to the world and was finding lots of conspiracy theories online saying that Chris Lehane and I were in cahoots together to bring John Kerry down and save the Clark campaign. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is complete coincidence that the story was broken on WatchBlog by an anonymous editor who wanted to make a name for himself....

...Drudge never linked to the WatchBlog story or credited it, however a copycat site called the Drudge Retort did link to it and I watched the traffic spike to 80,000-100,000 users a day....

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A Really Open Election: Clive Thompson,writing in the N.Y. Times Magazine, calls for open-source voting machines. Here it is, in a nutshell: How to ensure fair electronic elections.

...Electronic voting has much to offer, but will we ever be able to trust these buggy machines? Yes, we will -- but only if we adopt the techniques of the ''open source'' geeks.

One reason it's difficult to trust the voting software of companies like Diebold is that the source code remains a trade secret. A few federally approved software experts are allowed to examine the code and verify that it works as intended, and in some cases, states are allowed to keep a copy in escrow. But the public has no access, and this is troublesome. When the Diebold source code was accidentally posted online last year, a computer-science professor looked at it and found it was dangerously hackable. Diebold may have fixed its bugs, but since the firm won't share the code publicly, there's no way of knowing. Just trust us, the company says.

But is the counting of votes -- a fundamental of democracy -- something you want to take on faith? No, this problem requires a more definitive solution: ending the secrecy around the machines.

First off, the government should ditch the private-sector software makers. Then it should hire a crack team of programmers to write new code. Then -- and this is the crucial part -- it should put the source code online publicly, where anyone can critique or debug it. This honors the genius of the open-source movement. If you show something to a large enough group of critics, they'll notice (and find a way to remove) almost any possible flaw. If tens of thousands of programmers are scrutinizing the country's voting software, it's highly unlikely a serious bug will go uncaught. The government's programming team would then take the recommendations, incorporate them into an improved code and put that online, too. This is how the famous programmer Linus Torvalds developed his Linux operating system, and that's precisely why it's so rock solid -- while Microsoft's secretly developed operating systems, Linux proponents say, crash far more often and are easier to hack. Already, Australians have used the open-source strategy to build voting software for a state election, and it ran like a well-oiled Chevy. A group of civic-minded programmers known as the Open Voting Consortium has written its own open-source code.

Dollars for Iraq: Dan Gillmor, Jeff Jarvis and others are whipping up a buzz about Spirit of America, a blog-based effort to help the people of Iraq.

From Dan's Sunday column in the San Jose Mercury News:

...a Web-based humanitarian project that almost anyone can endorse, regardless of one's stance on the wisdom of the war. It's called "Spirit of America" -- and it's a bright spot in an otherwise horrendous muddle.

In the next few weeks, the organization hopes to sign up a million Americans as contributors, volunteers or simply people who are interested enough to pay attention.

Already, the non-profit Spirit of America is helping others donate an assortment of useful equipment -- everything from tools to sewing machines to school supplies to broadcasting gear -- in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans on the ground in those war-torn nations have forwarded requests from local people who want to rebuild and get on with their lives, and people here have offered money and time.

Although it's billed as above politics, there are those who question why we, rather than the government, are being asked to shoulder the rebuilding of Iraq. Check out the comments at the end of Dan's column.

(One comment comparing this effort to the Marshall Plan stopped me. That was a government program offering nearly $12 billion -- and another billion and a half in loans that were repaid -- to rebuild Western Europe after WWII. It was marvelously successful, but it was financed by taxpayers, not by private donations.)

Donations to Spirit of America are tax-deductible.

Update: Dave Winer doesn't like this idea.
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Yemeni Female Journalists - To be or not to be! From Yemen Times via news we can use:

Until recent years there were fields that Yemeni woman could not enter and work in because they are solely confined to men.

Nursing and media for example, are among fields that just few women dared to practice armed with courage and struggled to prove themselves, as the Yemeni society found those professions requiring more contact and boldness and perceived it as hardly to accept and to see women practice them.

Nowadays, in spite of the good number of females who join information college, just a few of them can be seen as working in the field.

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The Browser Wars Reignite: At Informit. No it's not just I.E. vs. Mozilla, it's about Microsoft making money:

Make no mistake: Microsoft really hates the web. The new browser war may appear to be about the emergence of Mozilla and friends with their polished eye-candy interfaces, but it's really about Microsoft versus the W3C (The World Wide Web Consortium tries to set standards for pages and tools so everything works in every browser). Internet Explorer is Microsoft's blocking tactic—never to be properly web-compliant, never to give the W3C a day in the sun—and Longhorn (Microsoft's next operating system) technology is the big-stick alternative being built. One of the purposes of Longhorn is to destroy the web as we know it.

The web is used to provide a variety of services and communities. Part of the Longhorn strategy is to extract from the web all of the services with any profit model at all: web magazines, auction sites, news, online retailers, and so on. When Microsoft tempts these organizations and communities to Longhorn, the web suffers the death of a thousand cuts. Over here will be the standards-based web, with a gradually shrinking set of web sites. Over there will be the future Longhorn-based proprietary global infrastructure...

. For Microsoft, the best possible outcome is for the standards-based web to be reduced to the profitless: a few idealistic hippies, some idle perverts, and the disaffected. Few others will want to go there; so every day there will be fewer traditional websites, every day less relevance.

This is a fundamentally different attack from that of the browser wars, round 1. Instead of fighting for control, the new browser war is a fight for the survival of the web itself.

Back before the commercialization of the web, we used to joke that this giant commercial creature would slither through and make the web unbearable for a few years, then move on when it couldn't own, control or sell it. We agreed to duck till it passed.
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