A good friend in action:

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Syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak was cited by police after he hit a pedestrian with his black Corvette in downtown Washington, D.C., on Wednesday morning.

A Politico reporter saw Novak in the front of a police car with a citation in his hand; a WJLA-TV crew and reporter saw Novak as well. The pedestrian, a 66-year-old man who was not further identified by authorities, was treated at George Washington University Hospital for minor injuries, according to D.C. Fire and EMS. Novak was later released by police and drove away from the scene.

“I didn’t know I hit him. … I feel terrible,” a shaken Novak told reporters from Politico and WJLA as he was returning to his car.

And to show you the remarkable capabilities of modern pundits to notice things, take that “I didn’t know I hit him” and compare it with an eye witness account:

As he traveled east on K Street, crossing 18th, Bono said “a black Corvette convertible with top closed plows into the guy. The guy is sort of splayed into the windshield.”

If you manage to not notice a person splayed into your windshield, how can the public expect you to notice the lies of the administration?

yeah, I know, I should be thinking about my vacation. This is the last post, honest

I’m packing my bags for three weeks of curacao right now…

Updates to this weblog will be minimal (if any) during that time, but if I’m lucky I’ll be back with tons of great underwater pictures like these (click for full size):

And that’s just part of the whopper:

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The major Sunni sheik who John McCain said was protected by the surge and subsequently helped lead the Anbar Awakening, was actually assassinated by an al-Qaeda led group in midst of the surge.

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Why are these news anchors smiling? Because they’ve been given cups filled with a solid plastic material that resembles coffee.

Two cups of McDonald’s iced coffee (BUY!) sit on the Fox 5 TV news desk, a punch-you-in-the-face product placement (BUY!) to chase down your morning news.

They’ve been on the Las Vegas station set for about two weeks, following the lead of a few TV stations across the country, and they’re still looking every bit as frosty and tantalizing (BUY!) as they were the first day you laid your eyes on them.

But wait, here’s the best part: They’re not real. Fake coffee on the real news, two plastic cups permanently filled with some kind of bogus drink. The anchors aren’t even supposed to acknowledge them, McDonald’s reps explain.

Ligt het nou aan mij, of kan de redactie van nu.nl beter het journalistendiploma inleveren?

Ik bedoel, bij een site als nu.nl hoor je aan de koppen op de home pagina toch al te kunnen zien waar het over gaat, en ik zie steeds vaker dit soort koppen:

Nederlanders vliegen vaker naar vakantiebestemming

Da’s gek, ik vlieg altijd maar een keer naar m’n vakantiebestemming. 9 uur vliegen is lang genoeg, ik ga voor een vakantie niet twee keer vliegen. En als je er eenmaal bent, waarom zou je nog een keer vliegen?

Of deze:

‘Google dicht bij overname Digg’

Ik heb toch liever dat Google gewoon open blijft na een overname…

Of ben ik gewoon aan vakantie toe?

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“As you can see, it had been shipped on a wooden pallet, no doubt to support the immense weight involved. We tore back the black plastic so that the awesome size of the package on the pallet could be seen.

“When we finally finished taking pictures and falling around laughing we found the package contained one vanilla flavour PS2 mouse. We could only think that it was a much fatter mouse when it was shipped but had lost a lot of weight due to the amount of time it took to arrive.”

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The oldest surviving copy of the New Testament, a 4th century version that had its Gospels and epistles spread across the world, is being made whole again — online.

The British Library says the full text of the Codex Sinaiticus will be available to Web users by next July, digitally reconnecting parts that are held in Britain, Russia, Germany and a monastery in Egypt’s Sinai Desert.

A preview of the Codex, which also has some parts of the Old Testament, will hit the Web on Thursday — the Book of Psalms and the Gospel of Mark.

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Handwritten in Greek more than 1,600 years ago — it isn’t exactly clear where — the surviving 400 or so pages carry a version of the New Testament that has a few interesting differences from the Bible used by Christians today.

The Gospel of Mark ends abruptly after Jesus’ disciples discover his empty tomb, for example. Mark’s last line has them leaving in fear.

“It cuts out the post-resurrection stories,” said Juan Garces, curator of the Codex Sinaiticus Project. “That’s a very odd way of ending a Gospel.”

The simplest answer is that the whole resurrection stuff was made up later.

for those of you who think this means that “the bible has a secure claim of being the oldest preserved book”, the Buddhist suttas of the Theravada tradition would like to have a word with you.

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Wachovia Corp. reported a surprisingly large second-quarter loss Tuesday, deflating Wall Street’s hopes that the nation’s big banks are weathering the credit crisis well. The nation’s fourth-largest bank by assets said it lost $8.86 billion, is slashing its dividend and eliminating 10,750 positions after losses tied to mortgages soared.

Even excluding one-time items, the results substantially missed Wall Street estimates.

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A Franciscan priest from New York pleaded guilty to raping three teenage boys during overnight trips to Boston in the 1970s and 1980s and was ordered Tuesday to serve time on probation.

Probation.

Why are we treating religion with kids gloves?

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The House rejected a bill last week that would have funded the purchase of paper ballots as a backup to electronic voting systems for the upcoming election.

The bill would have directed the Election Assistance Commission to establish a program to make the grants in time for the November vote.

Aviel Rubin, a professor of computer science at the University of Maryland and longtime skeptic of electronic voting, said he was disappointed by the House.

“It’s a real missed opportunity,” he said. “I just hope we won’t be sorry in November.”

If Democrats, who lost two presidential elections under questionable e-voting can’t pass a bill providing alternative paper ballots to guarantee free and fair elections, then you have to ask “which lobby paid them off?”

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Because Republicans have convinced people that government can’t make a difference in their lives, can’t solve their intractable problems, hence the only thing that matters are divisive social issues. The demands that government be ineffective has been a planned hallmark of the Bush administration. You don’t put a horse lawyer in charge of FEMA if you expect the agency to actually be effective in its mission. So as far as conservative ideology was concerned, Katrina was a resounding success.

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There was one middle-aged woman working the operation that day, roughly 50 years old. The TV was on the background and I heard “Obama” and “Afghanistan” in the same sentence. I asked, “Oh, is Obama already in Afghanistan?” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I haven’t followed the news.”

I stayed quiet, because ill and desperate for sleep, I thought I might squeeze a quick catnap before my segment came on. But the woman continued on her own. “I’m really disenchanted with McCain.” Oh, I responded, was she an Obama person? “No, I don’t like him either. I don’t trust him. And my daughter, she hates him.”

I inquired further, why? “Because he’s not patriotic, with the flag pin and the pledge of allegiance and his wife!” So we determined that she wasn’t going to vote, which was disappointing to American democracy, but good for us because she had been a reliable Republican voter. My interest piqued, I dug a little further: given how the economy was going, people losing their homes, the cost of gas through the roof, none of that was as important as a flag pin?

“Well, they can’t do nothing about those things.” Aha. The Frank theory, of course. Well, I responded, what about health care, are you happy with your health care? She lit up, “I know no one who is happy with their health care!” and then segued into a rant about the disgraceful state of the health care system. Well, I responded, Democrats are working for universal healthcare, but Republicans have gotten in the way. But we’ll be able to do it next year.

“Ain’t no one who can fix that stuff,” she sighed, slumping. That brief expression of fire and brimstone snuffed out in an instant. She was adamant that it was all hopeless. Fair enough. She didn’t look like someone who’d had an easy life. Health care had touched a nerve, so who knows what sad story or stories she had to tell on that front. But Republicans had convinced her that government was powerless to do anything about it, so … flag pins!

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Het was een ongewone strafzaak. Een automobilist (20) had op 10 mei vorig jaar op een invalsweg van Drachten een duif aangereden. De man stond voor de economische politierechter terecht voor overtreding van de Flora- en faunawet. Hij werd ervan beticht dat hij een houtduif, een beschermde inheemse diersoort, had gedood of verwond.

De verbalisant had tot zijn verontwaardiging gezien dat de beklaagde op een invalsweg van Drachten met onverminderde snelheid was toegereden op drie duiven. Twee van hen hadden tijdig kunnen wegkomen. Maar de derde was door de auto geraakt en weggefladderd naar bosschages. Het is niet bekend, of de duif de aanrijding heeft overleefd.

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De aanklager vorderde een boete van €150. De man had de zaak kunnen schikken door dat bedrag te betalen.

De economische politierechter dacht er evenwel anders over. Hij sprak de automobilist vrij. De magistraat constateerde dat niet is vastgesteld of de aangereden duif een ‘beschermde diersoort’ was of een gedomesticeerde vogel, zoals een postduif.

Tip van GeenStijl: let er op dat u mogelijk de beschermde rode kale bosmieren niet doodrijdt. 150 euro per mier, dus dat gaat in de papieren lopen.

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Viacom is sending bogus copyright ownership claims and illegal posting notices to independent filmmakers posting their own movies on YouTube. These films contain not one iota of Viacom content. Take, for instance, this lovely short animation, “Juxtaposer,” made by Joanna Davidovich for her senior project. It’s completely her original creation. She has copyrighted it and says that she “only entered into distribution agreements that were nonexclusive.” Yet, the media corporation saw fit to have YouTube tell Joanna, “Viacom has claimed some or all audio and visual content in your video.”

Joanna is, of course, disputing the claim.

The video is still up, but now Viacom gets access to her video statistics. The worst part is the fear Joanna has that something she slaved and sweat over could be taken away from her. “I’m just a scared that my little film will be lost in the shadow of the hulking monolith…,” she wrote on her blog. Also on her blog is a comment by another filmmaker indicating Joanna isn’t the only filmmaker Viacom has fraudulently targeted in this manner.

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