[Quote:]

The nation’s top climate scientists are giving “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, five stars for accuracy.

The former vice president’s movie – replete with the prospect of a flooded New York City, an inundated Florida, more and nastier hurricanes, worsening droughts, retreating glaciers and disappearing ice sheets – mostly got the science right, said all 19 climate scientists who had seen the movie or read the book and answered questions from The Associated Press.

The AP contacted more than 100 top climate researchers by e-mail and phone for their opinion. Among those contacted were vocal skeptics of climate change theory. Most scientists had not seen the movie, which is in limited release, or read the book.

But those who have seen it had the same general impression: Gore conveyed the science correctly; the world is getting hotter and it is a manmade catastrophe-in-the-making caused by the burning of fossil fuels.

It looks like only Big Oil still disagrees…

and those who oppose Gore for his political affiliations, of course…

[Quote:]

In 2005 Harvard’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies & West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center worked together to translate what appears to be one of the most important works defining al Qaeda’s strategic goals & methods, Management of Savagery (PDF) by al Qaeda strategist Abu Bakr Naji. Then they analyzed it along with three other al Qaeda works: Knights Under The Banner of The Prophet by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Between Two Methods by Abu Qatada and Observations Concerning the Jihadi Experience in Syria by Abu Mus’ab al-Suri. The result is Stealing al-Qa`ida’s Playbook (PDF) (also Google cached HTML). If you want to understand more of al Qaeda than the simplistic cant that “they’re evil”, these two books are the place to start.

One choice nugget: “The jihadi movement had been unsuccessful in the past because the superpowers propped up … proxy governments and convinced the masses through the media that they were invincible. The solution, Naji says, is to provoke a superpower into invading the Middle East directly. This will result in a great propaganda victory for the jihadis because the people will 1) be impressed that the jihadis are directly fighting a superpower, 2) be outraged over the invasion of a foreign power, 3) be disabused of the notion that the superpower is invincible the longer the war goes on, and, 4) be angry at the proxy governments allied with the invading superpower. Moreover, he argues, it will bleed the superpower’s economy and military. This will lead to social unrest at home and the ultimate defeat of the superpower.”
You’re doing a heckuva job, Bushie!

A few examples….

- The American Journal of Public Health reports more than 1,700 African Americans die each week because they don’t have the same access to health care as other Americans.
- The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports 110 workers die each week in workplace fatalities – many of which could be prevented by better enforcement of basic workplace laws by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (which is being gutted by budget cuts).
- The Pentagon reports roughly 15 American soldiers die each week in Iraq.
- The Institute of Medicine reports 346 Americans die each week because they lack health insurance.
- The Environmental Working Group reports that 192 Americans die each week because of exposure to asbestos.

So guess which issue the Senate decides to spend time on…

One of the most congested expressways in Sao Paulo, Brazil looks devoid of all traffic during the second half of the Brazil vs Ghana FIFA World Cup Germany 2006 match. Brazil won 3-1. (AFP/Mauricio Lima)

[Quote:]

A publishing firm fell foul of the law by using unlicensed typefaces worth £80,000, according to licensing lobby group the Business Software Alliance (BSA).

The publishing firm had claimed to be using just one font but in fact was found using 11,000.

The publisher was the subject of a BSA enquiry after an ex-employee tip-off, said the BSA, which is funded by software companies.

It looks from the article like this publishing firm was indeed breaking copyright law, but I find it noteworthy that the BSA has now adopted RIAA accounting rules. Here’s why:

Linotype claims over 6,500 fonts available.
Adobe claims over 2,200 typefaces available.
Bitstream claims over 1,400 fonts available.

[Quote:]

The European Commission is ready to impose a fine of 2m euros ($2.5m; £1.4m) a day on Microsoft.

The Commission is expected to rule that Microsoft has failed to fully implement its 2004 antitrust decision.

Under the ruling, Microsoft had to supply rivals with information about its Windows operating system.

On Monday, Microsoft said it had begun to provide the information Brussels had demanded, but the Commission has signalled the company acted too late.

In December, Brussels informed the software giant that it had failed to comply with the original ruling it issued in March 2004.

[Quote:]

About eight pages of a 51-page government brief filed in federal court in San Francisco on Wednesday were electronically blacked out to protect what prosecutors said was sensitive material concerning a grand jury’s investigation into steroid use in baseball.

But the secret passages can be viewed by simply pasting the document into a word processing program. The passages open a window onto a particularly aggressive government leak investigation, one that seeks to force two San Francisco Chronicle reporters to reveal the identity of their confidential sources. The passages also help explain why prosecutors are pursuing the matter so vigorously.

[Quote:]

An asteroid possibly as large as a half-mile or more in diameter is rapidly approaching the Earth. There is no need for concern, for no collision is in the offing, but the space rock will make an exceptionally close approach to our planet early on Monday, July 3, passing just beyond the Moon’s average distance from Earth.

And on July 4th, we fight back…

[Quote:]

Heavy storms that created flooding through the Mid-Atlantic States also impacted the White House.

A tree that has stood in front of the White House came down during heavy storms last night. The large American Elm was not planted by a president or first lady but it shares a piece of history in any case.

The NBC White House Bureau reports that the tree is featured prominently on back of the $20 bill. It can be found in the far right corner of the image on the back of a $20 bill. The tree is believed to date back 140 years to the Andrew Johnson White House.

Didn’t they get the arborist’s briefing two months ago, “Elm Tree Determined to Fall Down in Next Big Storm?”

(Jay Leno is going to have a field day with this….)

[Quote:]

Here’s an interesting news story from the New York Times this evening:

In a classified briefing to senior Pentagon officials last month, the top American commander in the Middle East outlined a plan that would gradually reduce American forces in Iraq by perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 troops by next spring if conditions on the ground permitted, three senior military officers and Defense Department officials said this week.

Oh, ooops … sorry, I don’t know how that happened. That story isn’t from tonight’s Times — it’s from August 2005. Here’s the story for this Sunday’s NYT:

The top American commander in Iraq has drafted a plan that projects sharp reductions in the United States military presence there by the end of 2007, with the first cuts coming this September, American officials say.

According to a classified briefing at the Pentagon this week by the commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the number of American combat brigades in Iraq is projected to decrease to 5 or 6 from the current level of 14 by December 2007.

. . . A reduction of eight combat brigades would equal about 28,000 troops.

. . . In the general’s briefing, the future American role in Iraq is divided into three phases. The next 12 months was described as a period of stabilization. The period from the summer of 2007 through the summer of 2008 was described as a time when the emphasis would be on the restoration of the Iraqi government’s authority.

We’ll see if the plan works any better this time…

[Quote:]

Thousands of U.S. veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are facing a new nightmare – the risk of homelessness. The U.S. government estimates several hundred vets who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are homeless on any given night across the country, although the exact number is unknown.

The reasons that contribute to the new wave of homelessness are many: some are unable to cope with life after daily encounters with insurgent attacks and roadside bombs; some can’t navigate government red tape; others simply don’t have enough money to afford a house or apartment.

They are living on the edge in towns and cities big and small from Washington state to Florida. But the hardest hit are in New York, because housing costs “can be very tough,” said Peter Dougherty, head of the Homeless Veterans Program at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Former army Pte. 1st Class Herold Noel had nowhere to call home after returning from Iraq last year. He slept in his Jeep, parked anywhere in New York “where I wouldn’t get a ticket.”

“Then the nightmares would start,” said the 26-year-old, who drove a military fuel truck in Iraq – one of the war’s most dangerous jobs.

At one point, he saw a friend’s leg blown off.

“I saw a baby decapitated when it was run over by a truck. I relived that every night,” said Noel, who walks with shrapnel in his knee and suffers from severe post-traumatic stress syndrome.

To help people like Noel, the VA gives grants to non-profit, private housing organizations that offer about 8,000 free beds across the country. The space isn’t always enough to accommodate everyone in desperate need of shelter among the more than 500,000 vets of Iraq and Afghanistan who have been discharged from the military so far.

When Noel returned, the shattered soldier couldn’t immediately find a job to support his wife and children and all the housing programs for vets he knew of “were overbooked,” he said.

The family ended up in a Bronx, N.Y., shelter “with people who were just out of prison and with roaches,” he said.

“I’m a young black man from the ghetto but this was culture shock. This is not what I fought for, what I almost died for.”

“This is not what I was supposed to come home to.”

[Quote:]

Rush Limbaugh was detained for more than three hours Monday at Palm Beach International Airport after authorities said they found a bottle of Viagra in his possession without a prescription.

Customs officials found a prescription bottle labeled as Viagra in his luggage that didn’t have Limbaugh’s name on it, but that of two doctors, said Paul Miller, spokesman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.

A doctor had prescribed the drug, but it was “labeled as being issued to the physician rather than Mr. Limbaugh for privacy purposes,” Roy Black, Limbaugh’s attorney, said in a statement.

Well, Rush, if you wanted to hide you’re using Viagra, you, ehm, failed.

“Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be
convicted and they ought to be sent up.”
– Rush Limbaugh. October 5, 1995

“What this says to me is that too many whites are getting away with drug use, too many whites are getting away with drug sales, too many whites are getting away with trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we’re not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too.”

– Rush Limbaugh. October 5, 1995

“When you strip it all away, Jerry Garcia destroyed his life on drugs. And yet he’s being honored, like some godlike figure. Our priorities are out of whack, folks.”

–Rush Limbaugh radio show (quoted in the L.A. Times, 8/20/95)

A South Korean soccer fan protests against what he considers to be the referee’s unfair judgment after South Korea’s national soccer team lost to Switzerland in their World Cup Group G match as they watched the match on a screen in Seoul, Saturday, June 24, 2006. Switzerland defeated South Korea 2-0. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

[Quote:]

The first picture of an Iraqi insurgent mine, believed to have been responsible for the deaths of 17 British soldiers, has been obtained by The Sunday Telegraph.

The device, which has been used by insurgents throughout Iraq since May last year, fires an armour-piercing “explosively formed projectile” or EFP, also known as a shaped charge, directly into an armoured vehicle, inflicting death or terrible injuries on troops inside.

The weapon can penetrate the armour of British and American tanks and armoured personnel carriers and completely destroy armoured Land Rovers, which are used by the majority of British troops on operations in Iraq.

The device, described as an “off-route mine”, was seized by British troops in Iraq earlier this year and brought back to Britain where it underwent detailed examination by scientists at Fort Halstead, the Government’s forensic explosive laboratory in Kent.

The Ministry of Defence has attempted to play down the effectiveness of the weapons, suggesting that they are “crude” or “improvised” explosive devices which have killed British troops more out of luck than judgement.

However, this newspaper understands that Government scientists have established that the mines are precision-made weapons which have been turned on a lathe by craftsmen trained in the manufacture of munitions.

A source from the American military, who has been working closely with British scientists, said that the insurgents have perfected the design of the weapon and know exactly where to place it to ensure maximum damage to coalition vehicles.

hmm… 134.

[Quote:]

As if beating a five-term congressman wasn’t hard enough, John Jacob said he has another foe working against him: the devil.
“There’s another force that wants to keep us from going to Washington, D.C.,” Jacob said. “It’s the devil is what it is. I don’t want you to print that, but it feels like that’s what it is.”
Jacob said Thursday that since he decided to run for Congress against Rep. Chris Cannon, Satan has bollixed his business deals, preventing him from putting as much money into the race as he had hoped.
Numerous business deals he had lined up have been delayed, freezing money he was counting on to finance his race.
“You know, you plan, you organize, you put your budget together and when you have 10 things fall through, not just one, there’s some other, something else that is happening,” Jacob said.
Asked if he actually believed that “something else” was indeed Satan, Jacob said: “I don’t know who else it would be if it wasn’t him. Now when that gets out in the paper, I’m going to be one of the screw-loose people.”

Yep, indeed.

Here at the Daily Irrelevant we often are the first to report the news. Therefore, we have implemented some security measures to keep the articles we’re still working on a secret. Here’s a picture of the latest addition…

Disappointing headline of the day

[Quote:]

He’s raced in Formula One, competed in the legendary Le Mans 24 hours and battled for honours at Sebring, but in the career of Perry McCarthy – dubbed by some as ‘the world’s unluckiest driver’ – one thing must surely stand head and shoulders above the rest.

And that thing? Taking on the role of the mysterious ‘Stig’ on popular British motoring show Top Gear.

Crash.net took the chance to catch up with Perry recently, to talk about life as the ‘Stig’ and find out just how easy it is trying to teach a celebrity to become a race driver…

Behold, the Krispy Kreme bacon cheeseburger. The decline and fall of an empire in only one thousand calories.

[Quote:]

You can tell you have created God in your own image when it turns out that he or she hates all the same people you do.

Read the rest of this entry »

[Quote:]

King of comic rock, Weird Al Yankovic says digital is a raw deal for artists like himself. When asked by a fan whether purchasing a conventional CD or buying a digital file via iTunes would net Yankovic more pocket money the artist answered on his website.

“I am extremely grateful for your support, no matter which format you choose to legally obtain my music in, so you should do whatever makes the most sense for you personally. But since you ASKED… I actually do get significantly more money from CD sales, as opposed to downloads. This is the one thing about my renegotiated record contract that never made much sense to me. It costs the label NOTHING for somebody to download an album (no manufacturing costs, shipping, or really any overhead of any kind) and yet the artist (me) winds up making less from it. Go figure.”

It confuses me too Weird Al. I think you deserve at least an equal amount of compensation for each digital track sold as you would be entitled to for that same one track on CD. 

As you said Al, “Go figure”. I’m a big fan, you’ve given me a lot of fun music over the years, and I wanted to do what you said. So, I went and did the math.

(Follow the link for the full analysis.)

[Quote:]

The world’s second-richest man,
Warren Buffett, became one of the world’s biggest philanthropists Sunday with the announcement that he would bequeath the bulk of his roughly $44 billion fortune to the foundation established by billionaire
Bill Gates and his wife.

The decision to start giving next month through annual stock donations represents a stark reversal for the investment wizard, who for years had said his wealth would be pledged to philanthropies after his death.

Buffett’s gift will radically boost the resources of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is already the world’s largest philanthropy with assets of more than $29 billion.

[..]

Buffett told Fortune that he decided to start giving his money away now because he has been impressed with Bill and Melinda Gates and the work they’ve done through their foundation. And he decided it would be easier to give to a large foundation instead of trying to expand his own foundation.

“What can be more logical, in whatever you want done, than finding someone better equipped than you are to do it?” Buffett told the magazine. “Who wouldn’t select Tiger Woods to take his place in a high-stakes golf game? That’s how I feel about this decision about my money.”

A few days ago I received the following e-mail from a long-time friend. On his request, I took out all identifying information and locations before I posted it.

———————
Hi,

Ali and I have a friend called Jim. I met him in the flea market about 10 years ago. He’s black, mid 60′s, missing some teeth, sharp dresser, catholic charity worker whom Dorothy Day somehow touched. He is the only Black “catholic worker”.

His ‘ministry’, as cardinal o’connor called it, was finding housing for homeless women. On-top-of-that he lets the church grind him down mercilessly. Old ladies would hire him for $4/hour (in 2004) to clean their giant apartments. The bourgeois commie white catholic workers would leave all the work at the shelter for him. He takes care of a crummy old priest. At the catholic run flea market he was the man: resolving vendor’s conflicts , driving off drunks, managing the sanitation trucks, and on Sunday nights, getting rid of the garbage and sweeping the lot. Notnetheless, he church always charged him $35 rent.

He is deeply religous as well as spiritual. To himself, I think, he has committed some great harm. For which he is doing a great pennance, hence his obsessive ‘good works’.

Lately he’s been ill with “cancer on his liver” (he is *real* private), and I had not received my weekly call for two weeks, so Sunday I went to the flea market to check on him, but he was not there. The gossips all said he was in the hospital. After work I drove to his apartment. His neighbor told me he was taken away by ambulance. “Tomorrow will be a week.”

From his address and the date Ali ran down some key info from the ambulance report. The problem was Jim never arrived at the hospital to which he was deliverd on the report.

The ambulance company was not cooperative on the phone, so I rode my bike to them to see if I could pursuade them in person. It was exactly one week later so perhaps the same drivers would be working. The ambulance garage’s personell doors were equiped with airphone intercoms and video cameras. One set of doors had a (disabled) push button keypad doorknob and a RFID scanner. The airphones were not working, but I got an employee who was leaving to make a couple calls. She escorted me and waited with me in her darkented office until a manager could see me. Jerry, the manager of the women with whom I had spoken to on the phone, got me the EMS’s names, their base, and she said they were “on tour” that night.

At the hospital, an ems told me the unit I wanted was on a call, so I bolted. My bicycle beat the second ambulance to the scene of a three car pile-up. When my unit didnt show I headed back to their base, where I learned the actual drivers I wanted to speak with started at 7pm. I had and hour, so I got curried goat and ginger beer from a Jamaican place. The food was great. Man this city is segregated.

I watched two guys park their cars and then put on their EMS uniforms. After their shift strated I went over and intruduced myself. The lead guy had already been told about me and my bike, so they thought maybe I was looking for a guy injured on a bike. It took a minute but they remembered my friend; his apartment, his paintings, his crazy landlady.

We’d called the hospitals and VA in the region, and no one had a record of any Jim. His mom lived in *****, but I never met her or went to her place. His daughter lived, married, in Connecticut. Ali ran down his name in the VA system, nothing. I got his DOB from a parish application, nothing. Mid-day yesterday it occurred to me that my most innocent friend had a secret name.

Neither the ER or the EMS had any name. I double checked the hospital registration but they had no record of him. Name was the only searchable field, and if you have the wrong name?

The last guy I spoke with last night said, “There is nothing I can do.” I asked, “What can i do? Just forget about it and let my friend die alone?”

Next Day: Ambulance company calls me, after some fencing, gives me his other name.

Next Day: Jim was better today. He was talking, reasoning, remembering. She has been so attentive to Jim. She bought 18 doughnuts and 6 bagels for the nurses. When they came in to thank her we told them about Jims good works. His care improved 10 fold. Ali gave him a manicure and put cologn on him. I massaged his feet w/ lotion. When I started they were like iron fishes.

Turns out he was adopted at 14 and his second name (to me) is his ture family name, which he used when he was in the army for less than a year in 67. He has a family in **. He doesnt want us to tell his mom or kids in ** until after he dies. “When the time comes tell my brother and my sister.” I tracked down his adoptive brother in ** and sister in ***** today. They seem like a really good family.

What a week.

I hope you are well.

[Quote:]

Europe’s Muslims have remained largely silent in the face of terrorist attacks that have killed 254 people in Madrid, London and Amsterdam. Europeans want to know why.

Why have so few of them publicly condemned the train and bus bombings in Madrid and London? Why have so few spoken out against the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, killed because his work was considered an insult to Islam?

Talk to Europe’s mainstream Muslims privately, however, and it turns out they have a lot to say.

Seek them out in the neighborhoods where they live and work — in the outdoor markets and butcher shops that sell halal meat, in the book stores that display literature on Islam and the West, in the boutiques that promote Islamic dress codes, in the Turkish restaurants and smoky Tunisian teahouses, in their schools and youth clubs — and they denounce, the vast majority unequivocally, attacks against civilians in both Europe and the United States.

“Van Gogh was a crazy man, but no one has the right to kill anyone who says bad things about the Quran,” said Mohammed Azahaf, a 23-year-old student who runs a youth center in Amsterdam. “If you kill one, it’s like killing the whole of mankind,” he said, quoting a line from the Muslim holy book.

Why, then, the public silence?

For some of the more than five dozen Muslims interviewed for this story in Amsterdam, Paris and London, it’s a sense of shame, or even guilt, that innocents have been killed in the name of Islam; they say those feelings make them seek to be “invisible.” For those lucky enough to have jobs, there is little time to protest or even write letters to newspapers. For others, there is fear of being branded anti-Islam in their communities.

[..]

But there is another reason for the silence — one that for many overrides all others.

Why, many Muslims ask, should they have to speak out against, or apologize for, actions of radicals who do not represent them — people they do not even regard as true Muslims?

Many find the very idea of being asked or expected to denounce such acts “extremely offensive and insulting,” said Khurshid Drabu, a senior member of the Muslim Council of Britain.

“I’m British,” said Tuhina Ahmed, 24, a British-born Muslim in London whose family came from Gujarat in India. “I could have been blown up as well.” Why, she asked, should she have to make a public statement to prove her objection to terrorism?

To many, the pressure to denounce acts of terror smacks of President Bush’s warning that ‘you are either with us or against us.’

“People and politicians say where are the Muslim people, why aren’t they on the streets defending themselves? They say we should go into the streets and condemn what happened so they see us as good Muslims,” said Karima Ramani, a 20-year-old Dutch born to an Algerian father and Moroccan mother. “I don’t feel it’s my duty. I’m not responsible for the death of Van Gogh.”

[Quote:]

German police rescued an American soccer fan lost in Hanover and unable to find his hotel again after helplessly wandering around the city for more than six hours after a match, federal police said Friday.

The 25-year-old Boston man had checked into his hotel in the afternoon before going to see a match between Poland and Costa Rica but could not remember his hotel’s name, its address or anything else about it, police spokesman Holger Jureczko said.

“He came into the police station at 3 a.m. and asked for help,” Jureczko said.

“The only thing he could remember was paying 10 euros for a taxi ride to the city center and that he went past a park and a Mercedes dealer. There are a lot of Mercedes dealers in Hanover but we were able to find the one in the vicinity of a park.”

Police took the American to the area that matched his vague description in the city of 500,000 and spent an hour driving up and down streets in that quarter until he recognized his hotel just before dawn Wednesday.