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The bats and frogs and Montane voles,
The squirrels, bugs and garden moles,
The creepers, flyers and the swimmers,
All hope that they will be the winners.
 
When we are gone, through choice or fate
‘Twill be a cause to celebrate.
Will old return or new arrive,
When Gaia once again can thrive?

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Its return from oblivion is a nice illustration of a brainteaser I have been giving my friends since I visited Netflix in Silicon Valley last month. Out of the 60,000 titles in Netflix’s inventory, I ask, how many do you think are rented at least once on a typical day?

The most common answers have been around 1,000, which sounds reasonable enough. Americans tend to flock to the same small group of movies, just as they flock to the same candy bars and cars, right?

Well, the actual answer is 35,000 to 40,000. That’s right: every day, almost two of every three movies ever put onto DVD are rented by a Netflix customer. “Americans’ tastes are really broad,” says Reed Hastings, Netflix’s chief executive. So, while the studios spend their energy promoting bland blockbusters aimed at everyone, Netflix has been catering to what people really want — and helping to keep Hollywood profitable in the process.

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Police confiscated the car and driver’s license of a Dutchman caught speeding who said he only wanted to dry his car after he had washed it.

The 27-year-old was stopped in Amsterdam driving at 108 kph (68 mph), 50 kph over the speed limit, police said.

“Because he did not have his driver’s license with him, his clean car was confiscated until he produces it,” a police spokeswoman said.

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Apparently the ribbon cutting is easier done when inverted! Will Curtis impresses the crowd at the Air Tattoo!

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The day before his mother’s funeral, Donald Rockson had a last-minute change of heart about her bible-shaped coffin.

He had wanted the coffin to reflect his mother’s position as a devout churchgoer in this suburb of Accra, Ghana’s capital.

“She is a church elder so it should be a bible in which she is buried,” he explained. “But the coffin was not nice, it was not presentable.”

Ditching the bible idea, his search for the perfect coffin brought him to Daniel Mensah’s coffin shop.

Rockson, who has saved a video of his mother lying in state on his mobile phone, comments with approval as Mensah and his apprentices pin silk and fix crosses and roses to an ornate white coffin, just minutes before the funeral is due to start.

Funerals are important social occasions in this West African country and elaborate, brightly colored coffins have become an art form.

Most customers give Mensah more time than Rockson but all want to give their loved ones a fitting send-off in a coffin that honors who they were and what they did.

Fantasy coffins shaped like Coca-Cola bottles, chickens, cars, cameras, birds and bibles are all on sale in Teshie.

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Readers of this blog will recall the Sam Bulte controversy from earlier this year and my resulting call that politicians take the “copyright pledge” under which they would agree not to serve as Minister of Canadian Heritage, Parliamentary Secretary, or sit on the Canadian Heritage Parliamentary Committee if they accepted campaign contributions from the copyright lobby. 

Canadian Heritage Minister Bev Oda did not take the pledge.  According to data just released by Elections Canada, if she had, she would not hold her current position.  During the campaign, Oda received contributions from many in the copyright lobby including Universal Music (tied for her third largest external contributor), the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, the Entertainment Software Alliance, the Canadian Music Publishers Association, and CRIA’s own Graham Henderson.  In addition, the broadcast lobby were also active supporters with Melinda Rogers (Ted’s daughter), Gary Slaight, Phil Lind, Jay Switzer, and the Canadian Association of Broadcasters. 

In all, a significant portion of Oda’s external funding during the campaign came from the very groups that now seek support from Minister Oda on key policy issues.  Further, it is striking that all the corporate and association donations came late in the campaign as the polls showed the Conservatives in the lead and after the Bulte story was generating public interest. 

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The founders of the new Dutch paedophile party stayed away from a court hearing on Thursday about their use of the initials NVD.

Haarlem-based security firm NVD asked a judge in The Hague to grant an injunction to prevent the Naastenliefde, Vrijheid en Diversiteit party using the initials NVD. The name of the party means neighbourly love, freedom and diversity.

The firm said the use of NVD by the paedophile campaigners damages its reputation. Employees no longer want to wear the uniform with the NVD logo to avoid being associated with the highly controversial party. Lawyers argued it would be impossible for the firm to place the logo on premises it is protecting.

The security firm has also received threatening emails via its website from people who seem to think it is connected with the paedophiles. The court is to deliver its ruling on Friday.

At least one of the founders of the paedophile party has gone into hiding. Ad van den Berg, 62, left his caravan at the Kruininger Gors recreation park on Friday, a spokesperson for the park’s owners, Molecaten Groep, said on Tuesday.

I can’t find an English language link of the news yet, but the security firm won – the party has to change the name. Prediction: we’ll never hear from them again. The phrase “higly controversial” in this article simple means: universally reviled.

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An obscure clip of a bird mimicking a chainsaw has been voted the nation’s favourite Sir David Attenborough moment.

Remarkably, the talented lyrebird proved more popular than the veteran broadcaster’s legendary brush with a group of mountain gorillas.

Sir David, who celebrates his 80th birthday tomorrow, came across the Superb Lyrebird, which gets its name from its colourful tailfeathers that fan out into the shape of a lyre, while he was in Australia filming the 1998 series The Life Of Birds.

The bird proceeded to perform an accurate imitation of a chainsaw, then gave a perfect rendition of the photographer’s camera shutter and the crew’s car engine and car alarm, as well as a dozen other birds.

The clip can be seen here

WK 2006 soccer starts today, and it could be so much better….

Here is a good article that mentions what teams have done to counteract the haka as well as some haka protocol, here‘s another.

This is the old All Blacks haka before the game against Tonga during the World Cup Rugby tournament (and the Tonga reply-haka)

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When the House and the Senate pass similar but not identical bills, they create a conference committee to work out the differences. When they both passed amendments to the “emergency supplemental” spending bill stipulating that none of the money could be used to build permanent bases in Iraq, the conference committee, behind closed doors this week, resolved that non-difference by deleting it.

This would appear to be a blatant violation of the rules of Congress and an unconstitutional voiding of the will of the people as expressed by their Representatives and Senators. But it can’t appear that way to a people that knows nothing about it. And it does not appear that way at all to the journalists who inform the public of its government’s doings. Even the minority members of the conference committee and the leaders of the minority party in Congress seem entirely comfortable with this course of events, although Congresswoman Barbara Lee has denounced the Republicans for it.

The House was the first to pass the “no permanent bases” amendment, back in March. Only one media outlet in the nation reported on the matter, the San Francisco Chronicle, which wrote:

“Lee’s amendment, which would bar the use of any funds in the new spending bill to establish permanent bases, passed on a voice vote, with no one speaking in opposition. President Bush and some top administration officials have said the U.S. military has no interest in permanent bases, the prospect of which is among the causes of anti-American unrest in Iraq. Leaders of the Republican majority also may have chosen to avoid a debate and recorded vote on Lee’s proposal because they didn’t want to go on record endorsing a permanent military presence in Iraq when polls show Americans oppose the war. Opponents also may try to strike the amendment when leaders of the House and Senate reconcile their bill for final passage. ‘In adopting this amendment, we can take the target off our troops’ backs by sending a strong and immediate signal to the Iraqi people, the insurgents and the international community that the United States has no designs on Iraq,’ Lee said on the House floor.”

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Then the Senate did the same thing. They passed “no permanent bases” on a voice vote with no opposition. And the media was silent. Everyone knew what was coming, but nobody felt the public should hear about it.
Now the newspapers are full of stories about things the conference committee did yesterday. None of the stories that I’ve seen mention the removal of the language about permanent bases. Instead, most of the articles focus on the idea that the conference committee saw its job as reducing spending. It stripped out money for American farmers and other useful spending.
But what would those farmers think if they knew the committee had spent their money on multi-billion-dollar permanent military bases in somebody else’s country, bases never explicitly authorized by Congress, bases built as part of an ongoing occupation never authorized by Congress? Would the farmers be dangerously overcome with joy to learn that? Is that the reason they must not be told?
If nobody knows and nobody cares, I guess it can’t be treason.

First I thought “But that’s what signing statements were for!” but then I realized the House and Senate need to show they care just about as much about following the law as the White House does…

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Een 17-jarige inwoner uit Heusden heeft de politie beledigd door een jas te dragen daarop aan de voor- en achterzijde een politielogo. Naast dat logo was een poppetje afgebeeld, die over dat logo stond te plassen.

De politie kon de grap niet waarderen en heeft de jas in beslag genomen en tegen de jongen proces-verbaal opgemaakt. Volgens de jongen had hij de jas voor zestig euro via internet gekocht. Het is niet de eerste keer dat een dergelijke jas wordt aangetroffen. In Drunen werd in april een soortgelijke jas in beslag genomen.

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We recently got hired by a credit union to assess the security of its network. The client asked that we really push hard on the social engineering button. In the past, they’d had problems with employees sharing passwords and giving up information easily. Leveraging our effort in the report was a way to drive the message home to the employees.

The client also indicated that USB drives were a concern, since they were an easy way for employees to steal information, as well as bring in potential vulnerabilities such as viruses and Trojans. Several other clients have raised the same concern, yet few have done much to protect themselves from a rogue USB drive plugging into their network. I wanted to see if we could tempt someone into plugging one into their employer’s network.

And oh boy, they did…

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Rep. Jerry Lewis’ (R) stepdaughter received more than $40,000 from a political fundraising group led by a defense contractor who got government contracts worth millions of dollars from a powerful House committee that Lewis chairs, records show.

Julia Willis-Leon was given the money by the Small Biz Tech Political Action Committee headed by Nicholas Karangelen, founder and president of Trident Systems, according to campaign finance records.

The payments were made in 2005 and early 2006, a time when Karangelen had been lobbying Congress for funding. Trident received $12.2 million in projects in defense spending bills between 2002 and 2006, according to a study by Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, who monitors “earmarks” that lawmakers include in congressional spending bills.

The bills were approved by the House Appropriations defense subcommittee and the full Appropriations Committee. Lewis led the subcommittee until taking over the full committee last year.

Rubble is seen at the blast site of the last residence of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Hibhib, Iraq, June 8, 2006.

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The U.S. military displayed images of the battered face of
Iraq’s most feared terrorist Thursday and Iraqis celebrated with gunfire after American bombs killed the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. It was a long-sought victory for U.S. forces, but officials cautioned of violence ahead — and a string of blasts proved that prediction almost immediately.

Within minutes of the announcement of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki named three key security ministers — military and political breakthroughs in rapid succession that marked the biggest potential turnaround in Iraq in months.

The two events may give the United States and its Iraqi allies another brief chance to build momentum toward stability and away from violence. With al-Zarqawi out of the way and the new government in place, some Sunni Arab leaders may be emboldened to resume a dialogue they started last fall — exchanges sunk by al-Zarqawi’s al-Qaida in Iraq.

If another effort is made, much will depend on the Iraqi government’s ability to live up to its promises to build a political system that includes all groups, including disaffected Sunnis. More than a dozen Sunni Arab insurgent groups are believed to be operating in Iraq, and a few use tactics just as ruthless as al-Zarqawi’s.