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Unable to afford a proper camera crew and equipment, The Get Out Clause, an unsigned band from the city, decided to make use of the cameras seen all over British streets.

With an estimated 13 million CCTV cameras in Britain, suitable locations were not hard to come by.

They set up their equipment, drum kit and all, in eighty locations around Manchester – including on a bus – and proceeded to play to the cameras.

Afterwards they wrote to the companies or organisations involved and asked for the footage under the Freedom of Information Act.

“We wanted to produce something that looked good and that wasn’t too expensive to do,” guitarist Tony Churnside told Sky News.

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My favorite terrorist is Hasan Elahi. Just saying his name makes my heart go up one Terror Alert level. Why Elahi? Well, to begin with, he’s innocent. A quality so rare in someone so guilty. You see, in 2002, Elahi was detained by the FBI on suspicion of hoarding explosives in a Florida storage unit. Turns out, he didn’t have any explosives. In fact, he was the only person in Florida without gunpowder. But the FBI refused to give Elahi a written letter clearing him of suspicion because he refused to change his name, religion and skin color. Instead, they just asked him to “check in” with them periodically. And here’s where I really like this guy: for the last six years, Elahi has taken the burden off government surveillance by surveilling himself. Everyday, Elahi takes hundreds of photos of his whereabouts and sends them to the FBI. Pictures of the airports he travels through, the bathrooms he visits, even the meals he eats. With these pictures, he’s ensuring that he’ll never be arrested on suspicion of terror, though by judging by some of the meals he’s eating, Gitmo might be an improvement.

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Last night while in NYC for his appearance on The Daily Show, John McCain also made time to attend a controversial fundraiser hosted by New York Jets owner Robert Wood Johnson IV on his behalf that may not have violated the letter of the campaign finance laws that McCain championed just a few years ago, but certainly the spirit of them. The event was said to have raised over $7 million, including a pledged $100,000 each from the 19 co-hosts and another $25,000 from each of the 39 co-chairs. Donors were apparently not limited by the $2,300 cap on individuals and could give tens of thousands of their own cash thanks to McCain’s Victory Committee created specifically to get around donation limits.

This isn’t the first McCain fundraiser to raise eyebrows.

Click to the full article if you eyebrows needs more raising.

On February 22nd, Hillary Clinton said the following in an interview with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America:

But now that Obama is getting close to that number she changed her mind:

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The Clinton campaign, on the other hand, insists the winner will need 2,209 to cinch the nomination—a tally that includes Florida and Michigan.

“We don’t accept 2,025. It is not the real number because that does not include Florida and Michigan,” said Howard Wolfson, one of Clinton’s two chief strategists. “It’s a phony number.”

Wolfson said they intend to contest the DNC’s 2,025 number “every day,” as well as any declaration of victory made by Obama based upon that number, because it does not include Florida and Michigan.

[..]

Obama will not reach the 2,025 magic number on May 20. Rather, on that date he is all but certain to hit a different threshold—1,627 pledged delegates, which would constitute a winning majority among the 3,253 total pledged delegates if Florida and Michigan are not included.

“On May 20 we’re going to declare victory,” said an Obama senior advisor who asked that his name be withheld to speak candidly, adding that after those contests they will be “the ones with the most pledged delegates and the most popular votes.”

The Oyster card is a card with an RFID chip in it that can be used in the London subway. People have recently started removing the RFID chip from their cards (basically by submerging it in nail polish remover, but hte things people are doing afterwards are more interesting. Apart from suggestions to stick it in the tip of a wizards wand, there’s one I really enjoyed:

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The niece of the conservative head of Spain’s Catholic Church has bared her breasts in a bestselling Spanish soft porn magazine in protest at the “hypocrisy” of her uncle.

Magdalena Rouco Hernandez appears topless on the cover of Interviu as well as in eight full-sized photos inside, including one were she is wearing nothing but a necklace of green beads and a red flower.

“I wanted to lay bare the hypocrisy of my uncle,” the 27-year-old mother of two told the magazine. “Through my uncle I discovered the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church which preaches one thing and does the opposite.”

Hernandez added:”My uncle does not stop repeating that the family is sacred, that you must respect it and fight for it, but then he scorns and abandons his own.”

You Might Be Having a Bad Day, If…

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The Chilean portal, Terra.cl, has an absolutely incredible gallery of UPI photographs of the volcano Chaitén’s enormous ash plume intersecting with a thunderstorm.

Chaitén’s unexpected eruption began late last week. Now, more than 4,000 people have been displaced by the volcano’s first activity in 450 years.

There’s 34 more pictures just like this one waiting for you at:

Tormenta eléctrica en erupción del volcán Chaitén.

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In his first interview since the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, Obama said he thinks the United States’ influence around the world has been diminishing.

“The world wants to see the United States lead. They’ve been disappointed and disillusioned over the last seven, eight years,” he told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in an interview on “The Situation Room.”

No, Obama, the world would really like to see the US shut the fuck up for a while. What’s the point in trusting your word if eight years from now there’s another Republican in office. I suggest your country shows that it can consistently vote for a sane president for a few election cycles. Maybe then we’ll trust you again.

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ernie Ward, the most prominent liberal voice on Bay Area talk radio for more than two decades, admitted Thursday to distribution of child pornography by e-mail in a plea deal that will send him to federal prison for at least five years.

Ward, 57, a former Roman Catholic priest, was a fixture on KGO-AM 810 for three hours every weeknight, known in recent years for his fervent denunciations of President Bush and the war in Iraq during his news talk show. He also hosted “God Talk,” a Sunday morning program on religion, and was a prolific fundraiser for the station’s charity drives.

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A Kuwaiti who had been imprisoned in Guantanamo for more than 3 1/2 years carried out a recent suicide attack in Iraq, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi took part in one of three suicide bomb attacks last month in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, said U.S. Navy Cmdr. Scott Rye, a military spokesman.

[..]

“It is unknown what motivated him to leave Kuwait and go to Iraq,” Rye said. “His family members reportedly were shocked to hear he had conducted a suicide bombing.”

Really? Shall I buy you a hint? How about this:

Military documents previously released to AP show that al-Ajmi was “constantly in trouble” while in Guantanamo and held in disciplinary blocks during his detention. He also allegedly told officials in August 2004 that “he now is a jihadist, an enemy combatant, and that he will kill as many Americans as he possibly can.”

Tom Wilner, a lawyer who represented Kuwaiti prisoners at Guantanamo, said al-Ajmi had a broken arm during one of their meetings at the base in Cuba and that he alleged he had been injured by guards who interrupted him while he prayed.

I think it’s time to just abondon Ebay.

Here’s why.

[Quote:]

When Americans last year were asked to name the journalist they most admired, showing up at No. 4 on the list was a comedian. Jon Stewart, host of “The Daily Show” on Comedy Central and former master of ceremonies at Academy Award shows, tied in the rankings with anchormen Brian Williams, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather and cable host Anderson Cooper1.

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A few years back I put it this way: “A cursory examination of American business suggests that its major product is wasted energy. Compute all the energy loss created by corporate lawyers, Washington lobbyists, marketing consultants, CEO benefits, advertising agencies, leadership seminars, human resource supervisors, strategic planners and industry conventions and it is amazing that this country has any manufacturing base at all. We have created an economy based not on actually doing anything, but on facilitating, supervising, planning, managing, analyzing, tax advising, marketing, consulting or defending in court what might be done if we had time to do it. The few remaining truly productive companies become immediate targets for another entropic activity, the leveraged buyout.” And this was all before the rise of the killer hedge fund.

[..]

At the time of the Enron collapse, I noted, “The last two administrations have been characterized by the invasive influence of an arrogant, autistic, and amoral class of late 20th century MBAs and similar members of the technocratic elite. This class has junked sixty years of social democracy, helped wreck the Russian economy, made every American worker a temp-in-waiting, carpet bombed the English language, trashed every moral concept in their way, and twisted reality so effectively they even convinced many that they were sex objects.

“And they are everywhere. You will find them running schools and universities and managing once great museums. They talk mush, think mush, market mush, report mush, and defend mush. They attempt to make up in certitude what they lack in wisdom; they can’t tell the difference between a phrase and a product; and they create infantile and self-serving distortions of economic principles that they declare to be the only principles in life worth observing. They are, in the end, just so many more televangelists, but with themselves as God. Perhaps worst of all, they are without the capacity for shame. Like other sociopaths, they are remorseless.”

Since then, it’s only gotten worse.

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Originally this article was supposed to be a book review of the upcoming O’Reilly title Subject to Change, but I was so appalled by its content that I felt compelled to shift focus to the more important issue of ethics in publishing. This book reflects a sinister trend in the tech book publishing industry that favors vapid, tedious material that serves to advise readers without revealing the big secrets. The purpose is for the authors (usually a group of writers, and most of them high-level managers) to promote their company and its services by giving readers just enough information. If they want the advanced material, they need to buy the rest at a premium price by going straight to the company for its professional services. Meanwhile, the publisher bathes in a sea of money while the authors relentlessly promote the book on their blogs and in their conference keynotes and panel discussions. Tech books have increasingly become corporate marketing vehicles, sacrificing the exciting A-list technical material that regular tech book buyers and enthusiasts have come to expect from companies like O’Reilly Media and Pearson Education. This isn’t the first book I’ve seen that gives readers a 20,000-word marketing pitch — that honor belongs to Enterprise Ajax (and it’s about three times longer). I’m bothered — sickened — to see that not only is this trend continuing unabated, but it’s actually become a habit.

Subject to Change is written by four people who hold high positions at a company named Adaptive Path. You’ve probably heard of that company because its CEO, Jesse James Garrett, is credited with coining the term Ajax in an essay he wrote a while ago. Other than that, there isn’t anything particularly remarkable about Adaptive Path, other than the fact that it seems to be a successful consulting firm. But from reading this book, you’d think that Adaptive Path was the second coming. Its logo is splattered across every cover surface, larger and more prominent even than O’Reilly’s. The authors speak in the first-person (usually plural, sometimes singular) and turn nearly every subject into a plug for their company.

[Quote:]

Al-Qaeda is getting better at using the Internet to tempt Americans into joining their cause. And that increases the threat of homegrown terrorism in the US, a Senate committee warned today.

In a report, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, urged the Government to return fire with a co-ordinated response.

“By speaking directly to potential followers in the United States, al-Qaeda and others are able to control their message, suppress dissent, and offer a hateful worldview that dictates, based on a perversion of the Islamic faith, that violence is the only remedy to rectify perceived wrongs,” the senators wrote.

Left unchecked, it’s likely that such enlistment messages will succeed in convincing individuals in the US to carry out terrorist attacks, they continued.

How about you guys just disconnnect this whole internet tubes thingy from the rest of the world? It’ll safe us loads of spam, so we’ll be happy to see you go as well.

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Sometimes, every day feels like ‘I-love-the-internet-day.’ On this site, people use photoshop to swap their heads with their kids’ heads. That’s it! That’s the whole idea! Really, really funny when it’s not frightening.