An Iraqi policeman walks through the rubble of a police station in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul after it was attacked by a suicide car bomber June 26, 2005. The attack brought down part of the building and killed at least four officers, police said. The death toll was likely to rise as rescuers were still digging in the rubble of parts of the old, two-storey building. (Namir Noor-Eldeen/Reuters)

An Iraqi policeman walks past cars mangled in the suicide car bomb attack

Remember when the CEO of a computer company was somebody with technical knowledge? And they had a sense of geekey humor? Well, look at this.

I was in the audience for this one. Scroll to 22:20 into the program for a fun exchange between Bill Gates and Jean-Louis Gassee. Remember that this was taped in San Jose, across the street from the Apple World Wide Developer Conference, just after conclusion of the last session there, so the part of the audience you don’t see on tape is made up of Macintosh developers. That should explain the answer and the audience reaction to it.

[Quote:]

A Spanish mother has taken revenge on the man who raped her 13-year-old daughter at knifepoint by dousing him in petrol and setting him alight. He died of his injuries in hospital on Friday.

Antonio Cosme Velasco Soriano, 69, had been sent to jail for nine years in 1998, but was let out on a three-day pass and returned to his home town of Benejúzar, 30 miles south of Alicante, on the Costa Blanca.

While there, he passed his victim’s mother in the street and allegedly taunted her about the attack. He is said to have called out “How’s your daughter?”, before heading into a crowded bar.

Shortly after, the woman walked into the bar, poured a bottle of petrol over Soriano and lit a match. She watched as the flames engulfed him, before walking out.

The woman fled to Alicante, where she was arrested the same evening. When she appeared in court the next day in the town of Orihuela, she was cheered and clapped by a crowd, who shouted “Bravo!” and “Well done!”

A judge ordered her to be held in prison and undergo psychiatric tests, provoking anger from friends and neighbours, who have set up a petition calling for her release.

Soriano suffered 60 per cent burns in the attack on June 13 and was airlifted to a specialist unit. He survived for 11 days before succumbing to his injuries.

It is understood that the woman, who cannot be named because of laws safeguarding the identity of rape victims, claims to have no recollection of the attack which took place in the Bar Mary, just 300 yards from the family home.

I would very likely do the same. Bravo!

[Quote:]

De verzekeraar Nationale Nederlanden is in de fout gegaan met het berekenen van opbrengsten uit beleggingsverzekeringen. De polishouders kregen tien jaar lang bij de aanschaf van een beleggingsverzekering rekenvoorbeelden voorgeschoteld die helemaal niet klopten.

Daardoor leek het dat zij aan het einde van de looptijd van de polis meer zouden ontvangen dan in werkelijkheid het geval was. Ongeveer een half miljoen beleggers zijn hierdoor getroffen, liet topman L. Wijngaarden zaterdag weten.

Hij bevestigde een bericht in De Telegraaf dat zijn bedrijf verkeerde berekeningen heeft gemaakt. Het dochterbedrijf van bankonderneming ING ontdekte de misleidende becijfering reeds drie jaar geleden, maar had het naar eigen zeggen te druk met andere, belangrijkere zaken om de betrokken klanten in te lichten. Dit zou pas begin volgend jaar gebeuren.

Het is goed om te weten waar de prioriteiten liggen van een bedrijf. Als NN niet al op m’n persoonlijke zwarte lijst had gestaan, had ik met dit bericht een ereplek ingericht.

Two monkeys at Rome’s zoo play together in the waters of a swimming pool during a hot afternoon, Thursday, June 23, 2005. The Summer season announced itself today with a steep rise in temperature, reaching over 30C (86 Fahrenheit) degrees in Rome.( AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

[Quote:]

The Department of the Treasury, though our Bureau of the Public Debt, is responsible for administering the National (or Public) Debt. We have compiled the chart below of the total debt at the end of each fiscal year starting with 1940, as excerpted from the Budget of the United States Government. This book is available on-line at the Government Printing Office (GPO). GPO produces this document each year for the Office of Management and Budget.

End of Fiscal Year	Gross Federal Debt
2005 (Estimate)	$6,118,364 million
2004 (Estimate)	$6,033,583 million
2003 (Estimate)	$5,946,792 million
2002 (Estimate)	$5,854,990 million
2001 (Estimate)	$5,768,957 million
2000 (Estimate)	$5,686,338 million
1999	$5,606,087 million
1998	$5,478,711 million
1997	$5,369,694 million
1996	$5,181,921 million
1995	$4,921,005 million
1994	$4,643,691 million
1993	$4,351,403 million
1992	$4,002,123 million
1991	$3,598,485 million
1990	$3,206,564 million

What a coincidence! For every year Bush has been in office, the debt is estimated. Surely an oversight. They must have estimated those numbers in 2000 and never touched them again, because I can’t imagine how they would fail, year after year, to notice that they are adding yet another estimate.

Wait a minute. The US Treasury Department’s own web site has incorrect numbers about the debt, even though the real numbers are available from the Treasury Department’s own Bureau of the Public Debt?

Here’s the real data:

[Quote:]

An Italian judge has ordered the arrest of 13 operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency accused of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric on a Milan street two years ago and sending him to a prison in Egypt for questioning, Italian prosecutors and investigators said today.

Judge Chiara Nobili of Milan signed the arrest warrants on Thursday for 13 people the documents identified as C.I.A. operatives suspected of seizing the radical imam Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, as he walked to his mosque here for noon prayers on Feb. 17, 2003.

His family says that he has been tortured by his Egyptian captors.

Investigators said the court documents, which remain under seal, identify the 13 operatives by their real names as well as their cover names. In the warrants, Judge Nobili said that all 13 suspects were linked to the C.I.A. and that several served as diplomats at the United States Consulate in Milan, investigators said.

The judge’s action represents the first time that American operatives face prosecution by a foreign criminal justice system for carrying out the C.I.A.’s policy of “extraordinary rendition,” the legal term for the agency’s practice of seizing terror suspects in one country and delivering them to be detained in another, including countries that routinely engage in torture. Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 100 terrorism suspects have been transferred by the United States to Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and other countries, where some former captives have said they were tortured.

Suppose all 13 are safely outside of the Italian’s jurisdiction. Suppose the Italian government decided to do some “extraordinary rendition” of their own. What if some members of the Italian intelligence came to Washington, kidnapped these CIA people, and took them back to Rome. Can you imagine the shitstorm?

And you know what else is funny? CIA Director Porter Goss says he has an “excellent idea” where Osama bin Laden is hiding, but “when you go to the very difficult question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states, you’re dealing with a problem of our sense of international obligation, fair play.”

Riiiight.

[Quote:]

With barely a word about it, workers at the Justice Department Friday removed the blue drapes that have famously covered two scantily clad statues for the past 3 1/2 years.

Spirit of Justice, with her one breast exposed and her arms raised, and the bare-chested male Majesty of Law basked in the late afternoon light of Justice’s ceremonial Great Hall.

The drapes, installed in 2002 at a cost of $8,000, allowed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to speak in the Great Hall without fear of a breast showing up behind him in television or newspaper pictures. They also provoked jokes about and criticism of the deeply religious Ashcroft.

[Quote:]

Most people think of Boston as a dense city, and it is, especially by American standards. Today’s city is, however, a pale shadow of the medieval maze that was Boston before large-scale modern planning and spatial concepts entered the picture.

[Quote:]

In “Private Warriors,” FRONTLINE correspondent Martin Smith travels throughout Kuwait and Iraq to give viewers an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at companies like Kellogg, Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, and its civilian army. KBR has 50,000 employees in Iraq and Kuwait that run U.S. military supply lines and operate U.S. military bases. KBR is also the largest contractor in Iraq, providing the Army with $11.84 billion dollars in services since 2002.

Le Building (quicktime) is a minute-and-a-half film that was used as an opening for the 2005 Annecy International Animated Film Festival. Made by students.

Making-of movie here.

Just… wow.

[Quote:]

Power-mad conman Robert Hendy-Freegard forced the many victims who fell prey to his devious charm to endure squalid lives of degradation and suffering, according to the judge due to sentence him for two counts of kidnap, 10 of theft and eight of deception.

BBC News examines how some were sucked into the former barman’s heinous world of make-believe espionage and derring-do.

Amazing what a good con-man can get people to do. Read the article, I can’t bring myself to quote a single con, it wouldn’t do justice to the magnitude.

[Quote:]

Parents of toddlers attending a Geneva, NY nursery school responded in outrage after their children were instructed to draw and color a known symbol of the homosexual agenda: the rainbow. The school has since apologized for the episode and is taking measures to prevent future incidents, including limiting the number of crayons and markers which children can use to color.

A move to limit coloring tots to three shades: red, white and blue

�When four-year-old Amanda Parker arrived home from nursery school at East Street Elementary last week, she was eager to show her parents the picture she’d drawn that day. But when the tot removed the crayon-on-manila-paper creation from her bulging backpack, her parents were shocked at what they saw. Amanda had drawn and colored a rainbow, the official symbol of the homosexual agenda in this country.

“To say we were taken aback would be a serious understatement,” says Amanda’s father Dan, a facilities technician. “As soon as we saw what she had in her hand our jaws just dropped.” Then came the hard part: Dan and his wife Margie had to explain to their daughter what was wrong with the picture she’d drawn and the colors she’d used.

“She got it,” he notes. “We tore it up as a family.” That night, with Amanda tucked in and in the arms of the Sandman, Dan and Margie began to discuss filing a lawsuit against the school.

[Quote:]

The decision by local court officials to deny the use of the Quran for oaths has garnered national media attention and the scrutiny of a Washington-based Islamic civil rights group.

Officials with the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Tuesday that statements by Guilford County’s top judge seem to endorse a particular religion and could be a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Guilford Senior Resident Superior Court Judge W. Douglas Albright told the News & Record last week that an oath taken on the Quran is not a lawful oath under state law. The law refers to laying one’s hand on the “Holy Scriptures.”

“Everybody understands what the holy scriptures are,” Albright said then. “If they don’t, we’re in a mess.”

Uhm, dude… you’re in a mess.

[Quote:]

In June 2000, a group of top government scientists and health officials gathered for a meeting at the isolated Simpsonwood conference center in Norcross, Georgia. Convened by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the meeting was held at this Methodist retreat center, nestled in wooded farmland next to the Chattahoochee River, to ensure complete secrecy. The agency had issued no public announcement of the session — only private invitations to fifty-two attendees. There were high-level officials from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, the top vaccine specialist from the World Health Organization in Geneva and representatives of every major vaccine manufacturer, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Wyeth and Aventis Pasteur. All of the scientific data under discussion, CDC officials repeatedly reminded the participants, was strictly “embargoed.” There would be no making photocopies of documents, no taking papers with them when they left.

The federal officials and industry representatives had assembled to discuss a disturbing new study that raised alarming questions about the safety of a host of common childhood vaccines administered to infants and young children. According to a CDC epidemiologist named Tom Verstraeten, who had analyzed the agency’s massive database containing the medical records of 100,000 children, a mercury-based preservative in the vaccines — thimerosal — appeared to be responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and a host of other neurological disorders among children. “I was actually stunned by what I saw,” Verstraeten told those assembled at Simpsonwood, citing the staggering number of earlier studies that indicate a link between thimerosal and speech delays, attention-deficit disorder, hyperactivity and autism. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants — in one case, within hours of birth — the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.

Even for scientists and doctors accustomed to confronting issues of life and death, the findings were frightening. “You can play with this all you want,” Dr. Bill Weil, a consultant for the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the group. The results “are statistically significant.” Dr. Richard Johnston, an immunologist and pediatrician from the University of Colorado whose grandson had been born early on the morning of the meeting’s first day, was even more alarmed. “My gut feeling?” he said. “Forgive this personal comment — I do not want my grandson to get a thimerosal-containing vaccine until we know better what is going on.”

But instead of taking immediate steps to alert the public and rid the vaccine supply of thimerosal, the officials and executives at Simpsonwood spent most of the next two days discussing how to cover up the damaging data.

The article goes on, but the point is: the Freedom of Information Act is one of the most important pieces of llegislation there is. Shine a light on cockroaches, and you remove their habitat.

[Quote:]

Three priests walk into my bistro.

No, this isn’t a setup for some awful joke – three padres sit in my section. They’re dressed in civilian clothes but I make them instantly. Former Catholic seminarians can spot priests a mile away. Perhaps it’s the clothes; the standard off duty Dockers and conservative button down shirts. Maybe it’s the odor of sanctity about them. Perhaps it’s because they’re always slightly uptight in public. God forbid someone sees them acting out of character; tell a dirty joke or have too much to drink.

“Hello Fathers” I say merrily.

The eldest of the trio smiles broadly. They’re busted.

“How did you know?” he says.

“Once a Catholic…..” I shrug.

“Well you’re very perceptive.”

“Thanks Father.”

The two younger guys order gin and tonics. The eldest orders a club soda. I’ll wager he’s a recovering drunk – uses grape juice instead of wine at Mass. It would make sense. Alcoholism is an occupational hazard for priests.

Come to think of it, it’s an occupational hazard for waiters too.

The priests order off the menu. They say please and thank you. They’re dream customers.

After I deliver their entrees I stand off to the side and listen in on their conversation. They discuss their jobs in the verbal shorthand priests use when they talk to each other in public. Having been in that subculture I understand every word.

I listen to them talk shop. Not much has changed since I left the seminary in 1990. But then again people and their problems never change.

I walk to the back and pour myself a short espresso. Seeing these guys reminds me about the time I studied for the priesthood. I was eighteen when I joined up – an idealistic firebrand who gloried in debating the finer points of theology and philosophy.

But the priesthood, and ministry in general, is not about that stuff. Not really. It’s about dealing with the passions and fears of flesh and blood people in the here and now.

Angels dancing on the head of a pin dissolve into nothingness at the bedside of a dying child.

When looking death in the face things get very real very quickly……..

I’m twenty one and doing a stint as a chaplain’s aide in a large gritty urban hospital.

Part of my job is to bring Communion to people dying in the AIDS ward. Most of the people wasting away in their beds are uninsured junkies or prostitutes. This is long before antiretroviral therapy. AIDS is poorly understood. Some people still wear masks out of fear of contagion.

Many of the people dying in this place are wracked with guilt. Remember how people used to say AIDS was God’s punishment for sinners? That’s not an abstract concept for many of these people. A lot of them made disastrous life choices – the consequences of which are now, remorselessly, killing them.

I’m too young and emotionally under equipped to be any real help to these people. I just try and listen. That’s hard. Some patients scream at me, driven insane by secondary infections that are rotting their brains. Others are stonily silent – not wanting help from anybody. Occasionally people find peace but that’s rare. They cry, they bargain, they pray. All the things people do as they rage against the dying of the light.

Maria is a drug addict. She got AIDS from years of mainlining heroin. Her baby, the result of exchanging sex for drugs, died of AIDS. She has no family or friends. She lies dying alone in a small room overlooking the hospital’s air conditioning plant. She hasn’t had a bath in days. The sweet sour smell of the unwashed is over powering.

“Hi Maria. I brought you Communion,” I whisper.

She looks at me weakly.

“Can I have some water?” she asks. She’s near the end.

“Sure.”

I look for her water bottle. There is none.

“Where’s your water bottle?”

“The nurses won’t let me drink water,” she says.

Must be something going on with her kidneys. Stupid doctors. The woman’s dying.

“Let me go ask the nurse what we can do,” I say.

“Thank you.”

I walk to the nurse’s station. A large black woman sits behind the desk yakking on the phone with what seems to her girlfriend. She looks at me with complete disinterest.

I wait patiently for her to finish. She doesn’t.

I wait some more.

“Pardon me, Maria wants some water. Can I give her some?” I interrupt.

“Can’t you see I’m on the phone?” the nurse yells.

“Yes but….”

“I’ll be with you when I’m finished!”

So I wait. The nurse ends her call.

“Now, what do you want?” she says angrily.

“Can I give Maria some water?”

“She’s on restricted fluids you can’t.”

“How about some ice chips then? I think she has dry mouth.” I ask innocently.

The nurse throws her hands up in the air in frustration. “Yeah, go get the girl some ice chips for what good it’ll do her. You can get them on the next unit.”

“Thank you,” I say.

I go over to the neighboring unit and fill a Styrofoam cup with ice. I walk back to Maria’s room.

“Maria I got you some ice chips.”

No response.

“Maria?”

I walk over to the bed. She’s dead.

A wave of incredible anger sweeps over me. All this poor girl wanted was a drink of water. It turned out to be her last request

Even this small thing was denied her.

I crush the cup in my hands. Ice scatters on the floor. Hot tears run down my face. This girl had nothing – less than nothing. She died thirsty and alone.

It was then my innocence was taken.

I march out to the nurse’s station. The nurse is on the phone again. When she sees me a look of annoyance crosses her face. “Now wha….”

I slam my hand down on the counter. “MARIA IS DEAD!”

The nurse jumps out of her chair.

“DON’T YOU GIVE A SHIT YOU LAZY BITCH? SHE’S DEAD!” I bellow.

All hell breaks loose. A code is called. Security is called.

The attending shows up. There’s a do not resuscitate order. He pronounces Maria dead.

Security guards escort me to the pastoral care office where the Chaplin waits for me.

Instead of yelling at me for losing my temper he sits me down on his couch. He hands me a cup of coffee.

“What happened?” he asks gently.

I tell him everything.

A small smile crosses his face. “That nurse is a lazy bitch,” he says.

I laugh harshly.

“This is hard work son,” he says.

“I had no idea how hard.”

We’re quiet. I listen to the wall clock tick.

“When you were looking at Maria in that bed were you thinking about yourself?” the priest says suddenly.

The tears come again.

“Yes.”

“What were you feeling?”

“That I never want to be alone like that.”

“Do you feel that alone?”

A truth I had been hiding from myself came bubbling up from the depths.

“Yes,” I start to sob.

The priest gets up and sits next to me. He gently and puts his arm around me. I cry till I feel like I’m going to shake apart.

When I finish the Chaplain says, “If you’re honest – trying to help people makes you confront the darkness in yourself.”

“Yeah,”

“Maybe you should work on feeling alone,” he adds.

“Kind of tough when you want to be a priest,” I reply.

“Maybe you should think about that.”

I’ve given my heart and soul to being a priest for four years. I’m supposed to go abroad to study theology next year. Now, for the first time, I realize it isn’t going to work out.

“God doesn’t want you to be unhappy,” the priest says.

“Then why drag me here and put me through all this for nothing?” I whisper.

“I don’t know.”

“God’s a real asshole sometimes isn’t he?” I say sadly.

The priest leans back and smiles. “A gigantic asshole.”

We both laugh.

A few months later I quit. ………….

Now, fifteen years later, I look at the priests sitting in my section. I smile.

I’m no longer that young seminarian from long ago.

I changed. I grew.

I’m still growing.

But I’ll never forget the kindness and wisdom that priest afforded me on that terrible day.

I buy my priests some dessert.

“Thank you!” the eldest says as I set down the tiramisu.

“Just trying to shave time off in purgatory Padre,” I chuckle.

“Well, none for me,” the younger priest says throwing up his hands.

He’s about my age. I look him in the eye.

“Faith is tempered in the fires of desire.” I say.

He considers that for a moment.

“Well maybe just this once,” he says grabbing a spoon.

They polish off dessert and leave a nice tip. The night ends. I go home.

I drive home thinking about the priests, Maria, and my time in seminary. When I get home I pull an old leather book of the shelf.

It’s my old breviary from seminary. I still have it.

The binding is loose. The pages are worn. I open it.

The one priestly habit I never lost was to slip important things inside my breviary. The book is stuffed with funeral cards, birth announcements, and love letters; pictures of friends dead and gone.

I pull one picture out. It’s a Polaroid of my brother and I when we were teenagers. We look so awkward. He’s getting married next month. Soon I’ll put a photo of him and his lovely bride in this book – the repository of memories.

I turn the pages till I get to Night Prayer. There’s a prayer there called the Nunc Dimittis.

I silently read the words I chanted years ago.

“Lord let your servant go in peace;
your word has been fulfilled;

my own eyes have seen the salvation
which you have prepared in the sight of every people.

A light to reveal you to the nations
and the glory of your people Israel.”

I close the book.

Now, years later, God and I sometimes get along.

I’m strangely peaceful.

I turn off the light and go to bed.

Flying home : A flock of birds fly home as the sun sets ending the longest day of the year in Lahore.

[Quote:]

Investigators for the United Nations Human Rights commission say they have credible sources and information that terrorists who are being detained at the camp in Cuba are being tortured.

The U.N. team claims the United States Government has not responded to requests from the investigators to check the camp in Guantanamo Bay.

An investigator tells the Associated Press, “The time is up.”

The U.N. statements come as a bit of a shock considering The White House just last week made an offer to any U.S. Senator or Congressmen to go down to the prison to see conditions first-hand implying there was absolutely no torture going on.

In a statement, investigators say, “Many of these allegations have come to light through declassified (U.S.) government documents.”

So I guess the next step is to discredit the UN. Things are looking up for Bolton!

[Quote:]

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people’s homes and businesses — even against their will — for private economic development.

It was a decision fraught with huge implications for a country with many areas, particularly the rapidly growing urban and suburban areas, facing countervailing pressures of development and property ownership rights.

The 5-4 ruling represented a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.

[..]

“Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random,” O’Connor wrote. “The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.”

[Quote:]

Many marketers suspect there are probably some valuable insights contained in the Web logs produced by the estimated 12 million online diarists. But in the cacophony of trivia, vitriol and bombast that fills the blogosphere, useful nuggets have been hard to find.

Now, a growing number of marketers are using new technology to analyze blogs and other “consumer-generated media” — a category that includes chat groups, message boards and electronic forums — to hear what is being said online about new products, old ad campaigns and aging brands. Purveyors of the new methodology and their clients say blog-watching can be cheaper, faster and less biased than such staples of consumer research as focus groups and surveys.

[..]

Marketers say bloggers’ unsolicited opinions and offhand comments are a source of invaluable insights that are hard to get elsewhere. “We look at the blogosphere as a focus group with 15 million people going on 24/7 that you can tap into without going behind a one-way mirror,” says Rick Murray, executive vice president of Edelman, a Chicago public-relations firm.

Well, since this is a weblog, I guess it’s time to quote Bill Hicks again. Perhaps this entry will be scanned…

“By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing… kill yourself. No, no, no it’s just a little thought. I’m just trying to plant seeds. Maybe one day, they’ll take root – I don’t know. You try, you do what you can. Kill yourself. Seriously though, if you are, do. Aaah, no really, there’s no rationalisation for what you do and you are Satan’s little helpers, Okay – kill yourself – seriously. You are the ruiner of all things good, seriously. No this is not a joke, you’re going, “there’s going to be a joke coming,” there’s no fucking joke coming. You are Satan’s spawn filling the world with bile and garbage. You are fucked and you are fucking us. Kill yourself. It’s the only way to save your fucking soul, kill yourself. Planting seeds. I know all the marketing people are going, “he’s doing a joke… there’s no joke here whatsoever. Suck a tail-pipe, fucking hang yourself, borrow a gun from a friend – I don’t care how you do it. Rid the world of your evil fucking machinations. I know what all the marketing people are thinking right now too, “Oh, you know what Bill’s doing, he’s going for that anti-marketing dollar. That’s a good market, he’s very smart.” Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags! “Ooh, you know what Bill’s doing now, he’s going for the righteous indignation dollar. That’s a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We’ve done research – huge market. He’s doing a good thing.” Godammit, I’m not doing that, you scum-bags!
Quit putting a godamm dollar sign on every fucking thing on this planet!
“Ooh, the anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market, Bill’s very bright to do that.” God, I’m just caught in a fucking web! “Ooh the trapped dollar, big dollar, huge dollar. Good market – look at our research. We see that many people feel trapped. If we play to that and then separate them into the trapped dollar…” How do you live like that? And I bet you sleep like fucking babies at night, don’t you?”

[Quote:]

The Defense Department began working yesterday with a private marketing firm to create a database of high school students ages 16 to 18 and all college students to help the military identify potential recruits in a time of dwindling enlistment in some branches.

The program is provoking a furor among privacy advocates. The new database will include personal information including birth dates, Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, grade-point averages, ethnicity and what subjects the students are studying.

The data will be managed by BeNow Inc. of Wakefield, Mass., one of many marketing firms that use computers to analyze large amounts of data to target potential customers based on their personal profiles and habits.

“The purpose of the system . . . is to provide a single central facility within the Department of Defense to compile, process and distribute files of individuals who meet age and minimum school requirements for military service,” according to the official notice of the program.

[..]

The Pentagon’s statements added that anyone can “opt out” of the system by providing detailed personal information that will be kept in a separate “suppression file.” That file will be matched with the full database regularly to ensure that those who do not wish to be contacted are not, according to the Pentagon.

And the moment a draft is required, you simply merge the databases again, and you’ve got a full list of recruits.

[Quote:]

The Intel systems run Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger identically on the surface as ordinary Macs, with the exception of a modified Processor System Preference (from Apple’s CHUD tools) that allows the user to toggle Hyper-Threading on or off. Apple System Profiler includes a new line under Hardware listing CPU Features; for the 3.6GHz Pentium 4 this comprises a rather lengthy list of technical acronyms: FPU, VME, DE, PSE, TSC, MSR, PAE, MCE, CX8, APIC, SEP, MTRR, PGE, MCA, CMOV, PAT, PSE36, CLFSH, DS, SCPI, MMX, FXSR, SSE, SEE2, SS, HTT, TM, SSE3, MON, DSCPL, EST, TM2, CX16, and TPR.

Apple’s System Profiler reports the graphics card as an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 800. Inside the Intel Mac, DVI support for the video card is provided by a Silicon Image Orion ADD2-N Dual Pad x16. Oddly, neither Silicon Image’s Web site nor Google turns up much information on the latter card, the latter yielding a single link to a recent Dell support forum posting.

The motherboard on the system is unmarked except for the word Barracuda. The system’s internals are housed inside a case similar to Apple’s Power Mac G5 systems but with a different configuration of fans.

[Quote:]

Before the arrival of Spanish colonizers some 500 years ago, Indians in what is now Ecuador dipped their arrowheads in venom extracted from the phantasmal poison frog to doom their victims to convulsive death, scientists believe.

More recently, epibatidine — the chemical which paralyzed and killed the Indians’ enemies — has been isolated to produce a pain killer 200 times more powerful than morphine, but without that drug’s addictive and toxic side effects.

Pharmaceutical companies have not yet brought epibatidine to market but hope to discover other chemicals with powerful properties in frogs, which are a traditional source of medicine and food for many of Ecuador’s Indians.

They may want to hurry because the treasure trove of the world’s frogs and toads is disappearing at a catastrophic rate. And it’s not just potential medicines which could be vanishing but creatures of beauty.