[Quote:]

In 2003, the United States and the European Union reached an agreement under which the EU would share Passenger Name Record (PNR) data with the U.S., despite the lack of privacy laws in the United States adequate to ensure Europeans’ privacy. In return, DHS agreed that the passenger data would not be used for any purpose other than preventing acts of terrorism or other serious crimes. It is now clear that DHS did not abide by that agreement.

[Quote:]

Rex Tillerson, Exxon Mobil’s new chief executive, has a surprising message for everyone who’s upset about high gasoline prices: Stop using so much of it.

That’s basically what Tillerson said Tuesday when a phalanx of reporters caught up with him on a Washington street near the Capitol.

“We just have to ask people to make sure they are using energy wisely,” he told CNN. “Be efficient with it, don’t waste it.”

Tillerson’s point is that there aren’t quick fixes to our energy problems — not $100 checks from Congress, not windfall profit taxes.

This is the sorry state of our nation’s energy policy: Oil companies are asking consumers to buy less of their products.

[Quote:]

A water leak that gushed through a hamlet for 16 YEARS was finally stemmed — when a farmer turned it off at a stopcock.

Water board officials had always insisted the stream pouring down a lane was a natural spring.

The leak created a constant river — and even a muddy pool at its “source�?.

But farmer John Berry eventually spotted a rusted stopcock in a grass verge nearby, turned it — and the “leak�? stopped.

John, 54, said: “It beggars belief that water officials could insist it was a natural stream when there was a tap so close. It just needed a turn. “I turned the tap off with my hand and half an hour later the water had disappeared, leaving just a mud hole.�?

[..]

Yet a spokeswoman still insisted: “The leaks in the past were spring water, but the spring water seems to have gone and this is a proper leak. It’s just a coincidence. The present leak is not spring water.�?

[Quote:]

To promote a scuba diving course, the agency installed these posters at the bottom of Antwerp’s public swimming pool. Curious swimmers who dived down to look at them read the words: “Not deep enough?” or “Want to stay a while?” followed by an invitation to ask for information on the course at the front desk.

[Quote:]

In the latest Vatican broadside against “The Da Vinci Code”, a leading cardinal says Christians should respond to the book and film with legal action because both offend Christ and the Church he founded.

Cardinal Francis Arinze, a Nigerian who was considered a candidate for pope last year, made his strong comments in a documentary called “The Da Vinci Code-A Masterful Deception.”

Arinze’s appeal came some 10 days after another Vatican cardinal called for a boycott of the film. Both cardinals asserted that other religions would never stand for offences against their beliefs and that Christians should get tough.

“Christians must not just sit back and say it is enough for us to forgive and to forget,” Arinze said in the documentary made by Rome film maker Mario Biasetti for Rome Reports, a Catholic film agency specialising in religious affairs.

“Sometimes it is our duty to do something practical. So it is not I who will tell all Christians what to do but some know legal means which can be taken in order to get the other person to respect the rights of others,” Arinze said.

I don’t understand why the Cardinal is so upset – after all, the premise of the book is that Jesus married Mary Magdelene, had kids, and this was covered up by the Church for centuries – who is going to believe that kind of crap? Everybody knows Jesus was born from immaculate conception and rose from the dead. Use your minds, people!

The Sultans Elephant is in London.

Flickr: here and here.

(via)

Why We Fight,
the BBC documentary from Eugene Jarecki about the American military-industrial complex and its origins (trailer@apple). For some reason its up in full at Google Video, so if you didn’t get a chance to see it in the theaters, well, here it is!

[Quote:]

Preston Blair’s Animation (Book 1) is the best “how to” book on cartoon animation ever published. When Blair put the book together in 1947, he used the characters he had animated at Disney and MGM to illustrate the various basic principles of animation. Apparently, the rights to use some of the characters were revoked after the book was already in the stores. Publication was halted for a time, and he was forced to redraw most of the MGM characters, replacing them with generic characters of his own design. The revised edition went on to become a classic, and the first edition was forgotten.

Animation historian, Jerry Beck, whose excellent blog Cartoon Brew is in the bookmarks of just about everyone in the animation business, has been hunting for a first edition of Blair’s landmark book for many years. He finally found a copy in a collection of material that belonged to legendary animator, Dave Tendlar. If you are familiar with the revised edition, you’re in for a treat. Pull out your copy and compare it to these scans…

[Quote:]

The makers of combat video games have unwittingly become part of a global propaganda campaign by Islamic militants to exhort Muslim youths to take up arms against the United States, officials said on Thursday.

Tech-savvy militants from al Qaeda and other groups have modified video war games so that U.S. troops play the role of bad guys in running gunfights against heavily armed Islamic radical heroes, Defense Department official and contractors told Congress.

The games appear on militant Web sites, where youths as young as 7 can play at being troop-killing urban guerillas after registering with the site’s sponsors.

“What we have seen is that any video game that comes out … they’ll modify it and change the game for their needs,” said Dan Devlin, a Defense Department public diplomacy specialist.

Devlin spoke before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, at which contractors from San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, gave lawmakers a presentation that focused on Iraq as an engine for Islamic militant propaganda from Indonesia to Turkey and Chechnya.

The problem with all this is: it is utter bullshit. The video the retarded writer is referring to is not made by terrorists. It was made by a member of the Planetbattlefield forums. The voice of in the video is not a terrorist – it is Trey Parker from the movie Team America World Police. The article also claims it is a mod created by terrorist. It is not a mod. It is the Special Forces Expansion pack that anyone can buy.

Here is the real source of the video.

http://www.forumplanet.com/planetbattlefield/topic.asp?fid=13670&tid=1806909&p=1

http://www.forumplanet.com/planetbattlefield/topic.asp?fid=7419&tid=1888667

[Quote:]

Jared Guinther is 18. Tall and lanky, he will graduate from Marshall High School in June. Girls think he’s cute, until they try to talk to him and he stammers or just stands there — silent.

Diagnosed with autism at age 3, Jared is polite but won’t talk to people unless they address him first. It’s hard for him to make friends. He lives in his own private world.

Jared didn’t know there was a war raging in Iraq until his parents told him last fall — shortly after a military recruiter stopped him outside a Southeast Portland strip mall and complimented him on his black Converse All Stars.

“When Jared first started talking about joining the Army, I thought, ‘Well, that isn’t going to happen,’ ” said Paul Guinther, Jared’s father. “I told my wife not to worry about it. They’re not going to take anybody in the service who’s autistic.”

But they did. Last month, Jared came home with papers showing that he not only had enlisted, but also had signed up for the Army’s most dangerous job: cavalry scout. He is scheduled to leave for basic training Aug. 16.

Officials are now investigating whether recruiters at the U.S. Army Recruiting Station in Southeast Portland improperly concealed Jared’s disability, which should have made him ineligible for service.

[Quote:]

Virginity pledges, in which young people vow to abstain from sex until marriage, have little staying power among those who take them, a Harvard study has found.

More than half of the adolescents who make the signed public promises give up on their pledges within a year, according to the study released last week.

The findings have raised the ire of Concerned Women for America, a prominent conservative organization that advocates adolescent sexual abstinence.

“The Harvard report is wrong,” said Janice Crouse, a fellow at a Concerned Women for America think tank.

[..]

The adolescents also were unreliable in reporting their sexual experiences, Rosenbaum said. More than a quarter of nonvirgins in the first interview who later took a virginity pledge said in the next interview that they had never had sex.

“That puts a lot of error in these studies,” Rosenbaum said. Virginity pledgers, she concluded, “are more likely to give bad information — unreliable data — about their sexual history.”

In other words, the pledge will problably not stop your kids from having sex, but they are far more likely to lie about it.

[Quote:]

“Pledging will help them delay sex for, say, 18 months — a year and a half,” says Bearman. “It’s a big deal in the lives of teenagers. Eighteen months is a phenomenally long time. It’s almost two school years.”

So what’s the downside?

“The downside is that, when they have sex, pledgers are one-third less likely to use condoms at first sex,” says Bearman. “So all of the benefit of the delay in terms of pregnancy-risk and in terms of STD acquisition — poof — it just disappears because they’re so much less likely to use a condom at first sex.”

Why do they not use condoms?

“They’ve been taught that condoms don’t work; they’re fearful of them. They don’t know how to use them,” says Bearman. “Their peers don’t use them. They have no experience with them. They don’t know how to get them. They’re hard to get access to. For whatever reason they don’t use them, that has long-term consequences.”

[Quote:]

Two London papers have speculated this weekend that complaints by President George W. Bush forced a British minister from his post because of his opposition to the use of nuclear force against Iran.

The Independent suggests that a phone call from the U.S. president to British Prime Minister Tony Blair led to the removal of Foreign Secretary Jack Straw Friday.

The newspaper reports that friends of Straw believe Mr. Bush was extremely upset when Straw pronounced any use of nuclear weapons against Iran “nuts.”

Both The Independent and the Guardian write that Straw’s “fate was sealed” after a White House phone call to Blair.

[Quote:]

U.S. President George W. Bush told a German newspaper his best moment in more than five years in office was catching a big perch in his own lake.

“You know, I’ve experienced many great moments and it’s hard to name the best,” Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001.

“I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound (3.402 kilos) perch in my lake,” he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

You know, Bush has finally said something I might be able to agree with…