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Best of wishes….
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all; and a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures, and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform, or sexual preference of the wishees.
By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher.
‘Raamambtenaar’ is herkenbaar fenomeen
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Vier op de tien hogere ambtenaren kennen iemand in hun werkomgeving die weliswaar aanwezig is maar nauwelijks presteert, een zogenoemde raamambtenaar. Dat blijkt vrijdag uit onderzoek van het weekblad Binnenlands Bestuur.
Een raamambtenaar is iemand die ’s ochtends niet uit het raam mag kijken omdat hij anders ’s middags niets meer te doen heeft…
‘I’d rather die in a terrorist attack than suffer through an uncomfortable shower’
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Back in September, The Daily Show’s Jason Jones sat down with Paul Cameron, one of the nation’s leading anti-gay activists, to ask about a defense for the “don’t ask, don’t tell? policy. Specifically, Jones asked about Bleu Copas, a decorated sergeant and Arabic language specialist who joined the Army after the 9/11 attacks, but was thrown out for being gay, despite his role in helping translate intercepted messages from possible terrorists.
Cameron said, “I think the country, on the aggregate, is safer without Bleu in the military.? Asked why, Cameron explained, “Guys don’t want to think about other guys, other fellas, ogling them in the shower or whatever.? Jones responded, “I know I’d rather die in a terrorist attack than suffer through an uncomfortable shower with a gay.? Cameron grudgingly responded, “Yes.?
As it turns out, a new Zogby poll shows that men and women in uniform disagree.
A new poll reveals that 73% of military members say they are comfortable around lesbians and gays. And 23% say they know an active duty soldier in their unit who is lesbian or gay…. More than half — 55% — of the troops who know a gay peer said the presence of gays or lesbians in their unit is well known by others. […]
“Those who defend the law have argued that openly gay personnel harm military readiness. This research highlights the absurdity of such a hypothesis,? said C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.
Only 5% of troops said they are “very uncomfortable? around gays.
For years, conservatives have said allowing gay people to wear a uniform and put their lives on the line for their country would undermine troop morale and lead to fewer Americans signing up for military service, because soldiers are ill at ease around gay people. The claim was always weak, but with poll results like these, it’s pretty thoroughly debunked.
First Thing I Saw In Venice
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Americans traveling abroad right now can’t help but be aware that our national profile is not at its best. We’ve gone from Le Monde saying “We Are All Americans” on September 12, 2001 to a situation in which the British — the British! — believe the United States a greater threat to world peace than the North Koreans.
So when Europeans meet an American for the first time these days, they’re looking and trying to make a judgment. Basically, they’re trying to decide if you’re OK or one of the crazy ones.
[..]
I checked into my hotel at about three in the afternoon. I took a nap, like I always do after a transcontinental trip, and after two or three hours, I woke up feeling great; I got ready, got dressed and went out. By now it was about six in the evening, beautiful warm night. I walked out of the hotel, turned left onto a street alive with people. And the first thing I saw was this:
Two young men, early twenties, swaying and swaggering up the street. They were laughing out loud, and even though they were about seventy or eighty feet away, something about them immediately identified them to me as American. Maybe it was because they looked like Brad Pitt. I should add that something about them made me hope that they weren’t American.
As I got closer, I could tell that they were drunk — not reeling, not staggering, not out of control, just drunk and feeling good about it. Everything about their manner commanded attention. They were talking about girls, and in really loud voices — cursing about them, actually, or about some specific girl. And then one said to the other, “Hold on.” He took two or three steps to a gate that separated a garden from the pedestrian walkway. And he pulled down his zipper and started peeing through the fence onto this beautiful garden.
I looked to my right and saw a man from India look and register puzzlement — followed by immediate, all too immediate, comprehension. I saw the Italians in front of me take in the situation with full understanding and then go about their business, neither happy about it nor willing to be provoked into a reaction. I believe that everyone on the street knew that those young men were Americans, and I also believe, though I can’t prove, that that’s why no one on that street looked surprised.
To many outside the United States, that is what Americans have become: Immature, swaggering, stupid as hell, vulgar, heedless, calling attention to ourselves, acting like the world belongs to us, announcing our Americanness everywhere, wrongly convinced that we’re lovable, without respect for anybody, without a capacity for shame, and pissing all over everything.
Iraqi Women’s Bodies Are Battlefields for War Vendettas
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The Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI) recently issued a frightening report documenting the growing practice of public executions of women by Shia Militia. One of the report’s more grisly accounts was a story of a young woman dragged by a wire wound around her neck to a close-by football field and then hung to the goal post. They pierced her body with bullets. Her brother came running trying to defend his sister. He was also shot and killed. Sunni extremists are no better: OWFI members estimate that no less than 30 women are executed monthly for honor related reasons.
[..]
Before the U.S. invasion, Iraqi women had high levels of education. Their strong and independent women’s movement had successfully forced Saddam’s government to pass the groundbreaking 1959 Family Law Act which ensured equal rights in matters of personal law. Iraqi women could inherit land and property; they had equal rights to divorce and custody of their children; they were protected from domestic violence within the marriage. In other words, they had achieved real gains in the struggle for equality between women and men. Iraqi women, like all Iraqis, certainly suffered from the political repression and lack of freedom, but the secular — albeit brutal — Baathist regime protected women from the religious extremism that denies freedom to a majority of women in the Arab world.
The invasion of Iraq, however, changed the status of Iraqi women for the worse. Iraq’s new colonial power, the United States, elevated a new group of leaders, most of who were allied with ultra conservative Shia clerics. Among the Sunni minority, the quick disappearance of their once dominant political power led to a resurgence of religious identity. Consequently, the Kurds, celebrated for their history of resistance to the Iraqi dictator, were able to reclaim traditions like honor killings, putting thousands of women at risk.
U.S. to declassify secrets aged 25 and older
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It will be a Cinderella moment for the band of researchers who study the hidden history of American government.
At midnight on Dec. 31, hundreds of millions of pages of secret documents will be instantly declassified, including many FBI cold war files on investigations of people suspected of being Communist sympathizers. After years of extensions sought by federal agencies behaving like college students facing a term paper, the end of 2006 means the government’s first automatic declassification of records.
Secret documents 25 years old or older will lose their classified status without so much as the stroke of a pen, unless agencies have sought exemptions on the ground that the material remains secret.
Historians say the deadline, created in the Clinton administration but enforced, to the surprise of some scholars, by the secrecy-prone Bush administration, has had huge effects on public access, despite the large numbers of intelligence documents that have been exempted.
And every year from now on, millions of additional documents will be automatically declassified as they reach the 25-year limit, reversing the traditional practice of releasing just what scholars request.
Greenpeace
The Year’s Most Interesting Sports Pictures
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Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy of Vietnam serves the ball in a match against China in the game of Sepak Takraw during the Asian Games in Qata
Monica Lewinsky Gets London Economics Degree
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Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, remembered for her sexual relationship with former President Bill Clinton, has received a Master’s of Science degree in Social Psychology from the London School of Economics, her publicist has announced.
Congratulations! Give that woman a cigar!
16-year-old dies playing Russian roulette
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Six people were booked on drug and weapons charges after a 16-year-old apparently shot and killed himself during a game of Russian roulette, authorities said.
Jacob White, of Prairieville, and the older friends were playing the game and smoking marijuana when White apparently shot himself Wednesday at White’s home, said Ascension Parish sheriff’s Lt. Paul Robert.
While White and his friends smoked the drug, they passed two handguns around. Robert said White took one of the two guns, and loaded it with at least one live round and put the weapon to his head. It discharged after he pulled the trigger several times, Robert said.
here is his myspace page..
Mystery artist puts new face on highway safety project
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The large white dots painted on the highway this summer to deter motorists from tailgating are now joined by a giant, yellow image of the 1980s video game icon.
“I drove that road the other day,” said an amused Wright County Sheriff Gary Miller, “and drivers were bunched up to figure out what it was … It’s definitely a Pac-Man eating a dot.”
The oversized Pac-Man has been on the highway for about a month, and the artist or artists behind it have been back to touch it up at least once.
“It’s kind of comical,” said county highway engineer Wayne Fingalson. “Somebody really did a good job of meticulously putting that (Pac-Man) in the dots.”
Tom Dumont, the area traffic engineer for the Department of Transportation, wasn’t happy with the addition to the $15,000 project.
“I’d hate to say positive things because I don’t want to encourage people to try to paint something on a busy highway. But at least it’s made the project a little more noteworthy,” Dumont said.
The 7-foot dots are 225 feet apart - the distance officials say is needed for a vehicle traveling at 55 mph to stop in three seconds without hitting the vehicle in front of it. Road signs tell drivers to keep two dots apart.
Manufactoring consent
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From the AP:
“Sir, I think we need to just keep doing what we’re doing,” Spc. Jason T. Green, with the 101st Military Intelligence Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Infantry Division, told Gates during a breakfast session with about 15 soldiers.
“I really think we need more troops here,” Green said. “With more presence on the ground, more troops might hold them off long enough to where we can get the Iraqi Army trained up.”
From the New York Times:
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, talking to enlisted soldiers on his second day in Iraq, heard broad support today for a proposal to send more American forces to Iraq, an idea that has emerged as a leading option as the Bush administration considers a strategy shift.
“I really think we need more troops here,” said Specialist Jason T. Glenn, one of several soldiers at a breakfast meeting with Mr. Gates who backed the idea. “With more presence here,” he said, security might improve to a point that “we can get the Iraqi Army trained up.”
And from the Washington Post:
In a breakfast earlier in the day with more than a dozen enlisted soldiers, however, Gates got an earful about the need for more personnel.
“I really think we need more troops here, with more presence on the ground. More troops might hold [the insurgents] off long enough to where we can get the Iraq army trained up,” said Spec. Jason Glenn, a member of an intelligence unit in the first infantry division.
Sensing the pattern here? It seems that the “boots on the ground” wanting an increase in troop levels is about to become conventional wisdom.
But let’s take a look at a couple of other responses Gates got during that breakfast session that haven’t been reported.
I think we need better — a different vehicle for patrols. I don’t think the humvee is the right vehicle. You know, there’s too many people dying over here, you know, getting injured, coming home with no legs or arms or whatever. They humvee is not made for this. [...]
Some of the stuff I’ve seen sounds like, (as you said, would be the little nit-picky ?) stuff, but some of the (stuff ?) needs to concentrate more on the bigger areas, like the vehicles, the up-armor and stuff, what they were saying earlier about getting them better developed (ones ?).
For some reason, concerns about safety, losing limbs or dying didn’t rate a mention in the story playing out across the country. Not as important as Jason telling us we need more troops.
God Ordered My Children’s Deaths
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A woman who claimed God ordered her to make a human sacrifice chose to throw her three children into San Francisco Bay instead of herself, making her guilty of murder, a prosecutor said during closing arguments at the woman’s trial.
Prosecutor Linda Allen asked jurors to use their heads, not their hearts, to determine LaShuan Harris’ fate.
“I don’t expect you to have a cold heart, but to have a rational mind,” Allen said.
The mentally ill Oakland woman has pleaded not guilty to three counts of murder by reason of insanity.
Cartoons
Heathrow
A passenger waits for a delayed flight at Heathrow airport’s terminal four in London August 12, 2006
RIAA Dismisses Case Against Internet-Illiterate Mother
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Well boys and girls, everyone’s favourite racketeering agency — better known as the RIAA — has dismissed the case against Patti Santangelo, one of the most famous targets of the RIAA lawsuits. This would seem like good news at first, however the RIAA is still pursuing its case against two of Mrs. Santangelo’s children.
To make matters worse, the RIAA has also dismissed the case ‘without prejudice’, meaning that they could, in theory, take action against her again later on.
[..]
The RIAA now seeks unspecified damages against Santangelo’s 20-year-old daughter Michelle, and 16-year-old son Robert. The RIAA alledges they downloaded and distributed more than 1,000 songs, and says the daughter has confessed to this fact — though the Santangelo’s lawyer denies this fact — and that the son has been implicated by statements from one of his friends.
They certainly deserve a stern talking-to
Spam Volume Jumps 35% In November
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Spam volume soared another 35% in November, an e-mail security vendor said Thursday, and the month saw spam tactics that reduced the efficiency of traditional anti-spam filters.
“There’s been a huge increase in spam volume,” says David Mayer, a product manager at IronPort Systems, “from 31 billion spams a day on average in October 2005 to 63 billion in October 2006. But in November, we saw two surges that averaged 85 billion messages a day, one from Nov. 13 to 22, the other from Nov. 26 to 28.
“The October-to-November increase is higher than any other month we’ve measured,” Mayer says.
Like other anti-spam vendors, IronPort puts the blame on a surge in botnet use, the increased use of image-based spam, and a rapid rise in the number of URLs registered by spammers. That combination, along with profit-driven innovation, has dramatically changed the spam landscape in 2006, said IronPort, which released its annual trend report earlier this week.
Here’s betting the ass in question is made in the USA.
I thought that one of the things that prevented us sensitive Brits from sights like this was the size of airline seats. Are there very wide seats available nowadays that can accommodate such enormous arses as this specimen?
Mind you, we in the U.K. should not be too smug about obesity, because thanks to our gleeful embracing of US food culture, we too are now becoming a nation of fatties.
When all is said and done, it still makes you wonder how she can possibly manage a fuss free shit, doesn’t it? (Sorry for that thought!)