[Quote:]

Britsh MPs visiting the Pentagon to discuss America’s stance on Iran and Iraq were shocked to be told by one of President Bush’s senior women officials: “I hate all Iranians.”

And she also accused Britain of “dismantling” the Anglo-US-led coalition in Iraq by pulling troops out of Basra too soon.

[..]

The Pentagon denied Ms Cagan said she “hated” Iranians.

“She doesn’t speak that way,” said an official.

But when The Mail on Sunday spoke to four of the six MPs, three confirmed privately that she made the remark and one declined to comment. The other two could not be contacted.

[Quote:]

Europeans expressed disappointment at US President Bush’s speech on climate change in which he urged the world’s worst polluters to cut emissions but stuck to his opposition to mandatory targets on global warming.

[..]

“This here was a great step for the Americans and a small step for mankind,” German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel told journalists in Washington. “In substance, we are still far apart.”

[..]

“One of the striking features of this meeting is how isolated this administration has become. There is absolutely no support that I can see in the international community that we can drive this effort on the basis of voluntary efforts,” John Ashton, a special representative on climate change for the British foreign secretary, said in an interview.

[..]

Bush’s proposal to expand nuclear energy to fight climate change and his statement that carbon dioxide emissions would be much higher today if it weren’t for the 439 nuclear power plants worldwide was sharply criticised by Germany’s Gabriel.

“I don’t it’s particularly clever to give the world the message: build new nuclear plants,” Gabriel said.

“First you urge people to expand nuclear energy and then you send in NATO to bomb the nuclear power plants because they did the wrong thing — that isn’t particularly intelligent politics.”

[Quote:]

A senior European diplomat attending the conference, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the meeting confirmed European suspicions that it had been intended by Mr Bush as a spoiler for a major UN conference on climate change in Bali in December.

“It was a total charade and has been exposed as a charade,” the diplomat said. “I have never heard a more humiliating speech by a major leader. He [Mr Bush] was trying to present himself as a leader while showing no sign of leadership. It was a total failure.”

[Quote:]

Jongeren moeten af van het beeld van meisjes en vrouwen als lustobject. Het kabinet wil de jeugd via hun school en via internetsites, muziekzenders en tv-programma’s weerbaar maken tegen seksueel geweld. Dat heeft het kabinet vandaag besloten.

Minister Plasterk van Emancipatie keert zich tegen de ,,huidige seksualisering van de samenleving waarbij meisjes en vrouwen als lustobject worden geportretteerd”, schrijft hij in zijn emancipatienota. Plasterk wil geweld tegen vrouwen bestrijden en hun positie wereldwijd bevorderen.

Ik sluit me aan bij de reaktie van GeenStijl.

[Quote:]

It’s about 3 months after the iPhone launch, and happy with the improvements, I was planning to change our “Wait” verdict to a full-on and rabid “Buy”. That wasn’t because of Apple, but because of the cool apps being offered by independent developers. All that came to an end yesterday after the new Apple firmware 1.1.1 neutered the handset. Sure, unlocked iPhones were broken. But more importantly, Apple wiped away the powerful programs that helped push the iPhone to greatness. With this, I’m going to have to move our recommendation from “Wait” to “Don’t hold your breath.” I’m done with this handset until third-party apps come back.

It’s actually much worse than that.

Behind screen 1 there is a computer you bought from Apple that runs OS X, and you’ve installed third party software on it.

Behind screen 2 there is a computer you bought from Apple that runs OS X, and you’ve installed third party software on it.

Guess the screen that holds the computer that Apple will disable remotely because you installed that software?

Right now it’s only the computer that can make a phone call as well (wait, you have Voip? Well, I mean the computer that can make calls on the GSM network). Who’s to tell what happens tomorrow? You can no longer trust Apple with your computer, so my recommendation has to be to avoid buying the computer behind both screens.

[Quote:]

School security guards in Palmdale, CA have been caught on camera assaulting a 16-year-old girl and breaking her arm after she spilled some cake during lunch and left some crumbs on the floor after cleaning it up.

The incident occurred last week at Knight High School in Palmdale and was caught on a cell phone camera by another pupil who was then also assaulted by the security guards.

Watch video of the incident here and here.

[Quote:]

A lawyer admitted Thursday that he destroyed a computer containing child pornography that was evidence in an investigation at a prominent church.

The lawyer, Philip Russell, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to one count of misprision of a felony, which means he had knowledge of a felony but didn’t report it. He faces up to 14 months in prison when he is sentenced in December.

Russell, a former lawyer for the Christ Church in Greenwich, was accused of obstructing an FBI investigation that led to the January conviction of the church’s music director, Robert Tate, for possessing child pornography.

[Quote:]

The Senate agreed on Thursday to increase the federal debt limit by $850 billion — from $8.965 trillion to $9.815 trillion — and then proceeded to approve a stop-gap spending bill that gives the Bush White House at least $9 billion in new funding for its war in Iraq.

Additionally, the administration has been given emergency authority to tap further into a $70 billion “bridge fund” to provide new infusions of money for the occupation while the Congress works on appropriations bills for the Department of Defense and other agencies.

Translation: Under the guise of a stop-gap spending bill that is simply supposed to keep the government running until a long-delayed appropriations process is completed — probably in November — the Congress has just approved a massive increase in war funding.

The move was backed by every senator who cast a vote, save one.

Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, the maverick Democrat who has led the fight to end the war and bring U.S. troops home from Iraq, was on the losing end of the 94-1 vote. (The five senators who did not vote, all presidential candidates who are more involved in campaigning than governing, were Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Republicans John McCain and Sam Brownback.)

[Quote:]

“AT&T’s new Terms of Service give AT&T the right to suspend your account and all service “for conduct that AT&T believes”…”(c) tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries.”

I suggest you do the same here.

Whatever this is, it isn’t democracy.

[Quote:]

Did the 1.1.1 update “brick” your iPhone?

Even if, like ours, it wasn’t hacked in any way?

In other words, even the saintliest of customers are getting fucked by the Sony that Apple pulled. I predict a class action lawsuit…

[Quote:]

A little more than a month ago, with the anniversary of Sept. 11 approaching and fears of a new al Qaeda attack rising, some U.S. intelligence and military analysts thought they had found one of the world’s two most wanted men just where they last saw them six years ago.

For three days and nights — between Aug. 14 and 16 — U.S. and Afghanistan forces pounded the mountain caves in Tora Bora, the same caves where Osama Bin Laden had hidden out and then fled in late 2001 after U.S. forces drove al Qaeda out of Afghanistan cities. Ultimately, however, U.S. forces failed to find Bin Laden or his deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri, even though their attacks left dozens of al Qaeda and Taliban dead.

One of the officials interviewed by NBC News, a general officer, admitted Tuesday that it was “possible” Bin Laden was at Tora Bora, saying, in fact, “I still don’t know if he was there.”

[..]

Michael Sheehan, a former Army Special Operations colonel and counter terrorism ambassador, says he is not surprised.

“Our response is normally too big, too slow, too cumbersome and too risk adverse and those factors normally come from Washington,” said Sheehan.
“The operators normally want to go in much smaller, much more low profile in order to be able to get to the target without being identified and as those plans go up the chain of command they normally get much bigger and much more cumbersome.”

But the bigger part of the picture is the question of allocation of resources from Afghanistan to Iraq. All Delta Force and “dark side” Rangers were moved to Iraq, said a special operations officer involved in the Afghanistan operation. Left behind in Afghanistan were SEAL Team Six and some Rangers. But apparently in this case, not enough “dark side” were available. The 82nd, said a second special operations officer, “is a poor substitute … [it is] a blunder to use them on an op with dark side operators.”

[Quote:]

On the edge of the Himley Estate lies the The Glynne Arms (more popularly known as the Crooked House or The Siden House). It is a house that has suffered badly from mining subsidence. It lies on what was the divide between Sir Stephen Glynne’s land and that of the Earl of Dudley.

Glynne removed too much of the coal that lies underneath with the obvious result. As the result of an optical illusion, without even taking a drink, beer bottles can really be seen to roll up the table!

Some years ago, the pub was shifting and sinking but buttressing prevented further damage but left it tilted some 15 degrees out of true. Doors, floors and windows all sit at odd angles to one another, causing patrons difficulty upon entering the pub and walking to the bar.

The sloping floor creates an eerie illusory sensation, making drinkers feel drunk after only a pint or two.

[Quote:]

I guess Apple was telling the truth.

I decided to try the 1.1.1 iPhone update on my unlocked and hacked phone. The process went along just fine until the iPhone restarted. Then I got a message on the screen that I had an incorrect SIM. I took the SIM out of the iPhone and put it in my old Treo, and it worked—I called my phone and it rang as expected.

Guess I’ll be headed to an AT&T store soon to try and get a new SIM card…

[Update]

Walked (well, more like ran) over to the nearest AT&T store. I told them my iPhone stopped working and that iTunes told me I needed a new SIM card (both true). The guy said no problem, and handed me a new SIM. He told me to install it, connect to iTunes, and activate the SIM with my existing account. Just got back, popped in the SIM, and no luck—getting the same errors.

Great work, Apple. Waging war on your own customers. You’re about to join the music industry on people’s shitlist.

Apple has a movie about the new features in an iPhone software update here.

About three quarters of it is lauding one feature: they now take up precious real estate on your home screen with a button for the iTunes Music Store. No, let me rephrase that, with an advertisement for their store. The rest of the new features fall in the “extremely minor” category, such as the ability to view your email attachments in landscape, and don’t add enough value to offset the advertising attempt.

So thanks, Apple, but no. I’ll skip.

[Quote:]

Creep everyone out in your guest bathroom. Each soap is shaped like a little hand! The soaps range from 1/2” to 2”.

You will get at least 10 hands (at least/about 100 grams of soap). This soap is made from goat’s milk and vegetable glycerin with a light scent. Your hands come packaged in a pretty bag…all ready for gifting to a friend with dirty paws!

The below image looks like a simple gradient with my website’s name on it. But it’s more than that. There’s a picture hidden in that gradient. Can you find it?

Answer here

[Quote:]

The City of Chicago is developing a futuristic video surveillance system designed to scan city streets looking for everything from bombs to traffic jams.

For the past few years Chicago has been rolling out thousands of video surveillance cameras linked by fiber-optic cables. This Operation Virtual Shield system is intended to give the city’s emergency response coordination agency the ability to remotely keep track of emergencies in real time.

Now, with the help of IBM Corp., Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) is looking to expand the system’s capabilities so that IBM’s software can analyze the thousands of hours of video being recorded by Operation Virtual Shield.

“That’s really going to just throw our camera network into hyperdrive,” said Kevin Smith, a spokesman with the OEMC. “Ultimately I think what this software might be able to do is simply recognize suspicious behavior and alert our operations people and, at times, our crime detections specialists as to what it sees.”

[..]

The trick will be to make the analytics software work in a useful way. “The challenge is going to be teaching computers to recognize the suspicious behavior,” said Smith. “Once this is done this will be a very impressive city in terms of public safety.”

Wait, that last sentence is wrong. Let me fix that for you.

The trick will be to make the analytics software work in a useful way. “The challenge is going to be teaching computers to recognize the suspicious behavior,” said Smith. “Once this is done this will be a very impressive city in terms of public safetyconformity.”

There. That’s more accurate.

[Quote:]

Remember that Stealth Update I talked about a couple of weeks ago? The one that Microsoft sent down the pipes to XP and Vista users and installed it irrespective of whether the user had given consent for updates to be installed? Remember too how the apologists claimed that there was nothing wrong with how Microsoft had behaved Microsoft Stealth Update and Windows XP repair don’t mixbecause there was no harm done? Well, it turns out that this update isn’t as benign as we first thought and can indeed cause problems for Windows XP users if they try to repair their installation.

[Quote:]

A little more than a year ago, the Township Committee in this faded factory town became the first municipality in New Jersey to enact legislation penalizing anyone who employed or rented to an illegal immigrant.

Within months, hundreds, if not thousands, of recent immigrants from Brazil and other Latin American countries had fled. The noise, crowding and traffic that had accompanied their arrival over the past decade abated.

The law had worked. Perhaps, some said, too well.

With the departure of so many people, the local economy suffered. Hair salons, restaurants and corner shops that catered to the immigrants saw business plummet; several closed. Once-boarded-up storefronts downtown were boarded up again.

Meanwhile, the town was hit with two lawsuits challenging the law. Legal bills began to pile up, straining the town’s already tight budget. Suddenly, many people — including some who originally favored the law — started having second thoughts.

So last week, the town rescinded the ordinance, joining a small but growing list of municipalities nationwide that have begun rethinking such laws as their legal and economic consequences have become clearer.

“I don’t think people knew there would be such an economic burden,” said Mayor George Conard, who voted for the original ordinance. “A lot of people did not look three years out.”

[Quote:]

Here’s a reality check for all those folks up in arms about Latinos “taking away jobs”: the unemployment rate has been at about 4 percent — a low number by any reckoning — during the same period we’ve seen the surge in immigration, legal and illegal, from Latin America. That tells us that not only are Latinos filling necessary economic niches, they’re contributing significantly to the economic growth we’ve seen in that same time.

And if we were to fall prey to the nativists’ agenda — which is nothing less than to ship out all 12 million illegal immigrants — the nation would suffer. Just as small cities that drive out their immigrant workforce suffer significant economic downturns, the same would happen to the U.S. on a larger scale. Immigrant labor, and a vibrant immigrant workforce, is one of the keys to a healthy economic future; it’s what will enable us to continue to compete in a global economy.

[Quote:]

[Quote:]

Bij verkiezingen moeten geen stemcomputers worden ingezet, maar papieren stembiljetten. De op papier uitgebrachte stemmen kunnen wel elektronisch worden geteld.

Dat heeft een commissie onder leiding van Frits Korthals Altes donderdag geadviseerd aan staatssecretaris Ank Bijleveld van Binnenlandse Zaken. De oud-minister heeft de afgelopen maanden onderzoek gedaan naar het verkiezingsproces in Nederland.

[Quote:]

Offering a grammar lesson guaranteed to make any English teacher cringe, President George W. Bush told a group of New York school kids on Wednesday: “Childrens do learn.”

Bush made his latest grammatical slip-up at a made-for-TV event where he urged Congress to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act, the centerpiece of his education policy, as he touted a new national report card on improved test scores.

The event drew New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings plus teachers and about 20 fourth and fifth graders from P.S. 76.

During his first presidential campaign, Bush — who promised to be the “education president” — once asked: “Is our children learning?”

On Wednesday, Bush seemed to answer his own question with the same kind of grammatical twist.

“As yesterday’s positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured,” he said.

The White House opted to clean up Bush’s diction in the official transcript.

Apart from all that, it didn’t occur to anybody that the measuring is adapted to get the results (and thus funding) schools want?

Henry Louis Mencken, writing for the Baltimore Evening Sun on 26 July 1920,

[Quote:]

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.