source of picture

[Quote:]

The gent’s name is Othman Awang; he’s in the northern Malaysian village of Kepala Bukit; and he’s rescuing his pet cat and pet goose from floodwaters, in this fine Reuters image via WaPo.

[Quote:]

PvdA-leider Wouter Bos wil na de verkiezingen in 2007 het liefst een kabinet met het CDA vormen. Dat zegt hij zaterdag in een interview met De Telegraaf. GroenLinks-fractievoorzitter Femke Halsema reageerde teleurgesteld op de uitspraken van Bos.

enzovoort, enzovoort.

En zo maakt het weer geen fluit uit wat ik stem – het enige dat ik van een verkiezing hoop, dat het CDA niet in de regering komt, zal gegarandeerd niet uitkomen. De uitkomst staat al vast, en poitici zullen weer klagen dat niemand geinteresseerd is in verkiezingen.

[Quote:]

A huge quake rupturing the Earth’s crust, heavy snow in Siberia, even high winds in the Andes Mountains can alter the planet’s rotation and change time, even by a single second.

And for people like retired Jet Propulsion Laboratory astronomer Skip Newhall, a second is a big deal – big enough that he’s planning his first, and possibly last, “leap second” party today at his Valencia home to note the extra blink of the clock between 3:59:59 and 4:00:00p.m. local time.

“We’re going to have 30, 35 people,” Newhall said Friday. “I’ve got three different time read-outs. One will have a 60 in the second spot – clocks don’t usually do that – and I have a couple of clocks that aren’t going to read right.

“I’m going to have everyone give a chorus of `boos’ for those.”

(and here is what Bill O’Reilly thinks of leap seconds…)

Arriving at Saturn in July of 2004, the Cassini spacecraft has now spent a year and a half exploring the magnificent rings and moons of the distant gas giant. The year 2005 began with Cassini’s Huygens probe landing on Saturn’s large moon Titan. Cassini’s continuing series of close flybys also revealed details and discoveries across the surface of the smog shrouded moon. In fact, with a ringside seat throughout 2005, Cassini’s cameras have made spectacular pictures of Titan along with Saturn’s other moons and rings almost common place. But often, Saturn itself provided the most dramatic backdrop. In this view, Saturn’s moon Dione lies in front of edge-on rings and the gas giant’s cloud tops draped with broad ring shadows. Dione is 1,118 kilometers across and lies about 300,000 kilometers from the ring’s edge.

[Quote:]

For those of you who have forgotten just what a stonewall paranoid Nixon was, the poor man used to stalk around the White House demanding that his political enemies be killed. Many still believe there was a certain Richard III grandeur to Nixon’s collapse because he was also a man of notable talents. There is neither grandeur nor tragedy in watching this president, the Testy Kid, violate his oath to uphold the laws and Constitution of our country.

The Testy Kid wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it because he is the president, and he considers that sufficient justification for whatever he wants. He even finds lawyers like John Yoo, who tell him that whatever he wants to do is legal.

The creepy part is the overlap. Damned if they aren’t still here, after all these years, the old Nixon hands — Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the whole gang whose yearning for authoritarian government rose like a stink over the Nixon years. Imperial executive. Bring back those special White House guard uniforms. Cheney, like some malignancy that cannot be killed off, back at the same old stand, pushing the same old crap.

Of course, they tell us we have to be spied on for our own safety, so they can catch the terrorists who threaten us all. Thirty-five years ago, they nabbed a film star named Jean Seberg and a bunch of people running a free breakfast program for poor kids in Chicago. This time, they’re onto the Quakers. We are not safer.

[..]

Folks, we KNOW this program is being and will be misused. We know it from the past record and current reporting. The program has already targeted vegans and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — and, boy, if those aren’t outposts of al-Qaida, what is? Could this be more pathetic?

This could scarcely be clearer. Either the president of the United States is going to have to understand and admit he has done something very wrong, or he will have to be impeached. The first time this happened, the institutional response was magnificent. The courts, the press, the Congress all functioned superbly. Anyone think we’re up to that again? Then whom do we blame when we lose the republic?

Getting a TV episode pulled because it makes fun of your religious belief system, and then calling the creators of that episode bigots should earn you a trip to the nearest dictionary.

[Quote:]

Intel Corp., whose marketing made its computer chips a household name, is changing its logo for the first time in 37 years.

The dropped “e” in Intel will be shed in favor of a swoop around the company’s name with the tag line “Leap Ahead.” The “Intel Inside” phrase, a fixture since 1991, will be dropped, Santa Clara, California-based Intel said yesterday.

Those who don’t know their history are bound to repeat it.

Besides, with this slogan, doesn’t Intel admit that they’re basically behind the competition?

[Quote:]

If you’re into reading legal proceedings verbatim, here’s a doozy for you. It gets even better if you like to see RIAA lawyers dragging themselves, rather than their chosen targets, through the dirt. Let’s get a feel for what’s going on here:

In Motown v. Nelson, pending in federal court in Port Huron, Michigan (Eastern District of Michigan, Southern Division), the defendants — Mr. and Mrs. Nelson — have made a motion for attorneys fees against the RIAA attorneys, pursuant to 28 U.S.C. 1927 for unreasonable and vexatious litigation and improperly interfering and/or obtaining false testimony from a prospective witness.

Got all that? Good. For the rest of us, here’s what it means. The RIAA sued the Nelsons, who in turn are basically asking for the case to be dismissed and their legal fees reimbursed, because the RIAA lawyers got the testimonies they wanted from some witnesses through coercion and/or extortion.

The transcript of the deposition that followed this motion gives us a glimpse into exactly how far the recording industry is willing to go to justify their crusade against file sharing. It’s also very long, so I’ll just give you a taste here:

[..]

Q. Did he tell you why he needed you to stick with your original false story?

A. Because he said he didn’t have a case unless I did.

Q. So, he told you that he didn’t have a case unless you stuck with the original false story?

A. Yes.

This is a 15-year-old girl, telling the story of how lawyers of a major industry group told her she had to commit perjury, just so they could win their case.

A bit late, I know, but I’ve just found a transcript of the powerful speech given by Harold Pinter for this year’s Nobel Prize.

[Quote:]

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed…

Read the whole speech here.
There’s a downloadable video in WMV format (16Mb zipped), link at top of the page.