...more recent posts
Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 different federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.
The Church report said that "none of the pictured abuses at Abu Ghraib bear any resemblance to approved policies at any level, in any theater." Admiral Church and his investigators must have missed the pictures of prisoners in hoods, forced into stress positions and threatened by dogs. All of those techniques were approved at one time or another by military officials, including Mr. Rumsfeld. Of course, no known Pentagon policy orders the sexual humiliation of prisoners. But that has happened so pervasively that it clearly was not just the perverted antics of one night shift in one cellblock at Abu Ghraib.
extreme ornithology: Mark Obmascik investigates the world of extreme bird watchers--enthusiasts who compete in the 365-day birdwatching marathon--in his new book The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession.
skeptic's annotated bible
a pretty amazing short "film" by michal levy.
(15 min. to load over my dial-up)
are bloggers reporters ?
crackdown on blogging?
Amazing 360 degree panorama of Toronto:
This is a composite of downtown Toronto, Centre Island and lake Ontario, put together from photos taken from the CN Tower skypod, 443 m above the ground.
Three rows of 18 photos (54 photos total) were used in the composite. Final processing was about 8 hours on a P3/1GHz/1GB.
Motorcycle Mayhem, a new (to me at least) one from My New Filing Technique is Unstopable.
Frank Luntz lists 14 words Republicans are not to say.
"No, man," I told him, "I hate those things, all that paper and those rubber bands. But I like you. I don't need to read it. Just tell me a little about it and I'll give you the blurb."
It was one of my best: "a howl of laughter from the abyss of horror, a comic nightmare from the sick, troubled sleep of this century's desolate end." And it appeared directly above Cubby's blurb.
-n tosches
file under: iPod, reverse engineering
Robotwisdom is back. Riothero is back.
Sadly, neither lemonyellow nor sevencrabrangoon are back although the above blasts from the past did make me check.
pinchbeck launching paradigm. more noise at mousemusings.
"Am I boring you?" Dr. Gene Scott RIP. I don't want to think how many hours I spent watching this dude on late night TV in the 80s.
gannongate : its worse than you think
the dubya tapes
Why is everyone mad at the mainstream media?
Now would be a really good time for me to revitalize the Syria page, but work precludes it. The US is going to use the assasination as an excuse to bash Syria, whether or not they are behind it. At this point, with an unpredictable tyrant in charge, it's hard to predict what the US will do.
surge in jonestown reference use
term useful to dems ? as in "we wont drink bush's kool-aid anymore" bumpersticker ?
an oldie but a goodie
Slashdot: In a fight between you and William Gibson, who would win?
Neal Stephenson: You don't have to settle for mere idle speculation. Let me tell you how it came out on the three occasions when we did fight.
The first time was a year or two after SNOW CRASH came out. I was doing a reading/signing at White Dwarf Books in Vancouver. Gibson stopped by to say hello and extended his hand as if to shake. But I remembered something Bruce Sterling had told me. For, at the time, Sterling and I had formed a pact to fight Gibson. Gibson had been regrown in a vat from scraps of DNA after Sterling had crashed an LNG tanker into Gibson's Stealth pleasure barge in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. During the regeneration process, telescoping Carbonite stilettos had been incorporated into Gibson's arms. Remembering this in the nick of time, I grabbed the signing table and flipped it up between us. Of course the Carbonite stilettos pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from between my shoulder blades and swing at his head. He deflected the blow with a force blast that sprained my wrist. The falling table knocked over a space heater and set fire to the store. Everyone else fled. [more...scroll down]
the 9/11 report is out
you know this one jim ? picturephoning
Weblog dedicated to Christo's Central Park exhibit The Gates.