[Quote:]

The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the “alternative interrogation methods” that their captors used to get them to talk.

The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation’s most sensitive national security secrets and that their release — even to the detainees’ own attorneys — “could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage.”

He know’s he’s a war criminal and he wants it hidden…

[Quote:]

In the three years since a tsunami devastated entire regions around the Indian Ocean, UNICEF has improved the lives and health of millions of women and children affected by the December 2004 disaster.

Through its ‘building back better’ recovery initiative, UNICEF has constructed and rehabilitated 107 schools, established teacher-training resource centres and improved education programmes. It has built 59 health facilities and 28 child care centres, and developed water facilities serving about 700,000 people.

At the same time, over 1.2 million children in the tsunami zone have been immunized against measles, and essential drugs and vitamin A have been provided to more than 3 million.

[..]

UNICEF’s goal has been to construct better facilities than those that were destroyed by the tsunami. In this sense, the disaster has led to an opportunity to help the tsunami-affected countries plan better futures for their children.

“We looked at what was needed to lead us towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals and we took it to a different stage,” said Mr. Cauldwell. “Where do we want this country or countries or populations to be in a decade’s time, and how does this response fit into much bigger, broader support for those countries?”

(From Progress for Children, A World Fit for Children Statistical Review reports on how well the world is doing in meeting its commitments for the world’s children.)

[Quote:]

[Quote:]

When we think of statues and buildings of the classical period, we tend to imagine white marble; scientists in recent years have discovered that it is in fact most likely that many of the buildings and statues were painted and probably adorned with jewelry. The Vatican Museum has recently put on an exhibition of some of the most famous antiquities from the era with reproductions painted as close to the originals as they can – this is possible because many statues contain trace amounts of pigment from their original coats of paint.

1. I prefer breasts to legs
2. Tying the legs together keeps the inside moist.
3. Smother the butter all over the breasts!
4. If I don’t undo my trousers, I’ll burst!
5. I’ve never seen a better spread!
6. I’m in the mood for a little dark meat.
7. Are you ready for seconds yet?
8. Its a little dry, do you still want to eat it?
9. Just wait your turn, you’ll get some!
10. Don’t play with your meat.
11. Stuff it up between the legs as far as it will go.
12. Do you think you’ll be able to handle all these people at once?
13. I didn’t expect everyone to come at the same time!
14. You still have a little bit on your chin.
15. How long will it take after you put it in?
16. You’ll know it’s ready when it pops up.
17. Just pull the end and wait for the bang.
18. That’s the biggest bird I’ve ever had!
19. I’m so full, I’ve been gobbling nuts all morning
20. Wow, I didn’t think I could handle all that and still want more!

[Quote:]

These two studies — and others that are recounted in the Armstrong and Green paper — strengthen the authors’ assertion that the oft-touted advice to chase market share in order to achieve greater profitability, is a harmful myth.

I have one more example for these guys: Apple.

[Quote:]

Last week, a couple of days before retiring to one of the big damn compounds at which he vacations, President Bush made his way to Walter Reed to give out a few Purple Hearts and to get his picture taken with wounded soldiers, but not the too-skeevy, burn-scarred, brain damaged ones. Ones with nice clean wounds. For better photo-ops.

Here he is with Army Spc. John C. Hoxie from Philippi, West Virginia. On August 21, Hoxie was near an IED that exploded south of Baghdad. And then he was shot. He lost his left hand and his left leg. His right leg was mangled. He suffered “internal injuries,” too. He’ll finally get to go home late next year.

The point here is not whether or not Hoxie is proud of his service. It’s not even the level of care he’s receiving at Walter Reed (which his father praises). The point is the picture, of the crippled boy and the standing man.

Said the standing man, “Every time I come to a facility like this I count my blessings.” So what the standing man learned from the crippled boy is “Better him than me.” And then he gave the crippled boy a medal for getting crippled.

[Quote:]

It’s a crazy world we live in. Crazier every day. But one of the craziest notions that ever came down the pike is evolution. Who in his right mind would ever believe that the complicated homo sapien derived from a speck? That’s getting the larger from the smaller.

Here’s one pastor who’s probably still convinced a baby comes from a stork. After all, a pregnancy would be “getting the larger from the smaller”, right?

Oh, wait, that requires biology, and that’s science. Can’t have that.

So.

I guess I’ll have to quote something else for this pastor, about getting the larger from the smaller…

How about….

Then said he, Unto what is the kingdom of God like? and whereunto shall I resemble it?
It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it.

– Luke 13:18–9

And he said, Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with what comparison shall we compare it?
It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth:
But when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it.

– Mark 4:30–2

Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field:
Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.

– Matthew 13:31–2

The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us what Heaven’s kingdom is like.” He said to them, “It’s like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky.”

– Thomas 20

[Quote:]

I think the agency is putting on a show for travelers who fly only once or twice a year. The message: the $4.7 billion of taxpayer money is being well spent to protect you.

From exploding pies.

Feel safer yet?

[Quote:]

Chase will reset everyone’s marketing preferences under the guise of providing “more options to specify which mail offers you do not want.” Remember when you originally opted-out? They didn’t quite understand. What about their Value Added Products And Services and Used Vehicle Financing? Unless you opt-out again by January 24, Chase will acknowledge your implied change of heart.

moar funny pictures

A lot of kids are going to get the “Guitar Hero” computer game for Christmas. This kid won’t.

[Quote:]

Public floggings hurt, even when administered by satirical sacred noodles.

Ask the Polk County School Board. The panel made news last month when five of its seven members declared a personal belief in the concept of intelligent design, the religiously based explanation of the development of life believed in by many Christians.

Four of those five sympathetic board members said they would like to see intelligent design taught in Polk schools as an alternative to Darwinian evolution, at a time when new state standards mentioning evolution by name for the first time are under consideration.

Just like that, it appeared the Darwin wars had found their newest battlefield.

Yet a few weeks later, the controversy is dying with a whimper. There’s no board support for a challenge to the proposed standards. Some of the five school board members blame the local newspaper for trying to start a fight.

“It’s not our agenda,” said Tim Harris, one of the board members. “My personal opinion and how I vote don’t always jibe.”

What happened? You can start with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

The satirical religious Web site asserts that an omnipotent, airborne clump of spaghetti intelligently designed all life with the deft touch of its “noodly appendage.” Adherents call themselves Pastafarians. They deluged Polk school board members with e-mail demanding equal time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism’s version of intelligent design.

“They’ve made us the laughingstock of the world,” said Margaret Lofton, a school board member who supports intelligent design. She dismissed the e-mail as ridiculous and insulting.

[Quote:]

The archbishop of Wales thinks one of the greatest problems facing the world is “atheist fundamentalism”. The only problems he seems to be able to ascribe to it, though, are a dearth of school nativity plays and stewardesses failing to drape themselves with religious paraphernalia, neither of which seem to be exactly pressing crises, especially since it is quite clear that there is no worldwide shortage of public piety. If all outspoken atheism has done is offend a few sanctimonious old bishops, it sounds to me like a virtue that we ought to encourage.

I’d say that this is a much more serious problem:

There are demented fuckwits running for the office of president in the most militarily powerful nation in the world. They think they can have conversations with an all-powerful cosmic being who instructs them in the right things to do, and that they have the approval of that being, no matter what they do: they can initiate an unjust and futile war that kills and maims our soldiers and slaughters the civilians of another country; they can endorse torture; they can deprive people of their civil rights; they can treat loving couples as pariahs if they don’t meet their abstract notions of who is allowed to fall in love; they can poison the planet; they can oppress the poor; they can enrich their corrupt cronies; they can pretty much run roughshod over any notion of justice, liberty, and equality. And what does their imaginary god do? He gives them a phantasmal thumbs-up and an ethereal “Good job!” and assures them that he is on their side. That’s all he can do, since all he is is a projection of a mob of venal bluenoses’ sense of entitlement.

[Quote:]

If only I could get a room filled with 8-year-olds to test my code.

Why do the people in Kentucky vote against their own interests?

[Quote:]

The trend toward fewer conflicts reported by peace researchers since the early 1990s now seems to have been broken. This is shown in the latest annual report “States in Armed Conflict,” from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program at the Uppsala University Department of Peace and Conflict Research. The findings worry the researchers. The Middle East is the region where peace initiatives are most conspicuous in their absence.

Since the most conflict-ridden years in the early 1990s, a continuous decline was registered up to 2002. Since that time the number has held steady at around 30 active armed conflicts per year. This is probably also the case for 2007.

[Quote:]

The family of a 17-year-old California girl who died after being initially denied payment for a liver transplant is suing the teen’s insurance company, an attorney for the family said Friday.

Nataline Sarkisyan, who died Thursday night after her family removed her from life support, had been in a vegetative state for weeks due to complications following a bone marrow transplant. Insurer CIGNA HealthCare had first denied a doctor-recommended liver transplant for Nataline, who suffered from leukemia, but had reversed course yesterday in the face of mounting public pressure.

Literally murder by spreadsheet. It’ll be interesting to see if this case is going to play a role in the primaries.

[Quote:]

The federal agency in charge of policing the torrent of political spending during the upcoming presidential primaries will, for all practical purposes, shut its doors on New Year’s Eve.

The Federal Election Commission will effectively go dark on Jan. 1 because Congress remains locked in a standoff over the confirmation of President Bush’s nominees to the panel. As a consequence, the FEC will enter 2008 with just two of six members — short of the four votes needed for the commission to take any official action.

“There is, in effect, nobody to answer the phone,” said Robert F. Bauer, a leading Democratic campaign finance lawyer.

Although the 375 auditors, lawyers and investigators at the FEC will continue to process work already before them, a variety of matters that fall to the commissioners will be placed on hold indefinitely. Chief among them are deciding whether to launch investigations into possible campaign finance violations and determining the penalties.

Pie-chart

[Quote:]

Huckabee: There is a level of elitism that has existed, the chattering class if you will who lives in that corridor between Washington and Wall Street and they sort of live in their protected world, and frankly for a number of years many of them thought of people like me – whether it was because we were evangelicals or because maybe we were out from the middle of America. They were polite to us. They were more than happy for us to come to the rallies and stand in lines for hours to cheer on the candidates, appreciated us putting up the yard signs, going out and putting out the cards on peoples doors and making phone calls to the phone banks and – really appreciated all of our votes. But when they got elected, behind closed doors, they would laugh at us and speak with scorn and derision that we were, as one article I think once said “the easily led.” So there’s been almost this sort of, it’s okay if you guys get a seat on the bus, but don’t ever think about telling us where the bus is going to go.

[Quote:]

Republicans have won the votes of downscale evangelicals for years by arguing that Democrats condescend to them and sneer at them behind their backs. Well, how do you think they’re going to respond if East-coast conservative elites start doing the same thing–but in full public view?

[Quote:]

The basic story is that last March, the wise men who run Circuit City came up with the brilliant idea of laying off their more senior salespeople, who get $14-$15 an hour, and replacing them with new hires who get around $9 an hour. It turns out that this move was not very good for business. One of the reasons that people go to a store like Circuit City, rather than buying things on the Internet, is that they want to be able to talk to a knowledgeable salesperson. Since Circuit City had laid off their knowledgeable salespeople, there was little reason to shop there.

Apparently Circuit City came to this same conclusion earlier this fall and tried to hire back some of the people it had dumped. In any case, things have not gone well for the bottom line. The company is now losing money and its share price is down more than 75 percent from its value earlier this year.

We all know what happens when you mess up in the dog eat dog world of big business — you get retention awards (that’s because your stock options aren’t worth anything). The Post reports that Circuit City’s executive vice-presidents will get retention awards of $1 million each. That’s 35 years worth of pay for one of sales clerks who earned $14 an hour. And that’s just the bonus.

Getting paid a bonus for being an incompetent nincompoop. What a job!

[Quote:]

Researchers from Google have documented serious vulnerabilities in Adobe Flash content which leave tens of thousands of websites susceptible to attacks that steal the personal details of visitors.

The security bugs reside in Flash applets, the ubiquitous building blocks for movies and graphics that animate sites across the web. Also known as SWF files, they are vulnerable to attacks in which malicious strings are injected into the legitimate code through a technique known as cross-site scripting, or XSS. Currently there are no patches for the vulnerabilities, which are found in sites operated by financial institutions, government agencies and other organizations.

The vulnerabilities are laid out in the book Hacking Exposed Web 2.0: Web 2.0 Security Secrets and Solutions. It is due to hit store shelves soon, but is already in the hands of many security professionals. The book’s authors, who work for penetration testing firm iSEC Partners as well as for Google, say a web search reveals more than 500,000 vulnerable applets on major corporate, government and media sites.

“Lots of people are vulnerable, and right now there are no protections available other than to remove those SWFs and wait for the authoring tools and/or Flash player to be updated,” says Alex Stamos, one of the book’s authors. “In the mean time, people will have to think: ‘What kind of flash am I using on my site,’ and manually test for vulnerabilities.”

[Quote:]

New Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has answered “no” when asked on BBC radio if he believed in God.

The rapid-fire question and answer format on 5 Live meant the 40-year-old did not have the chance to elaborate.

He later said he had “enormous respect for people who have religious faith”, that his wife is Catholic and that his children are being brought up Catholic. ”

[..]

Later the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, reacted to Mr Clegg’s declaration.

Dr Williams told Radio 5 Live presenter Simon Mayo: “It matters less to me than to know they are honest and reliable and that what beliefs they have they hold sincerely.

“This isn’t a country where Christianity is imposed by law. It’s a country with a nominally Christian majority. And that’s good.

“And whoever becomes prime minister has to understand that and work with it rather than against the grain of it.”

[Quote:]

We have tried to calculate the true cost of producing and transporting bottled water before, and have come up with just vague approximations, which did not take the production of the bottle into account. Over at Triple Pundit, Sustainability Engineer and MBA Pablo Päster has done a thorough and exhaustive study of the cost of bring a litre of Fiji Water to America. He starts with the production of the bottle in China, taking the bottle blanks to Fiji, and confirming that it takes more water to make the bottle than it actually holds. He then transports the bottle to the States by ship. Not even including the distribution in the States, the numbers are absolutely staggering.

In summary, the manufacture and transport of that one kilogram bottle of Fiji water consumed 26.88 kilograms of water (7.1 gallons) .849 Kilograms of fossil fuel (one litre or .26 gal) and emitted 562 grams of Greenhouse Gases (1.2 pounds).

[Quote:]

Last year Microsoft filed a patent application, published yesterday, that explains a method by which embedded advertising can’t be skipped. From the application abstract: “Enforcing rendering advertisements and other predetermined media content in connection with playback of downloaded selected media content. Playback of selected media content is made conditional on acquisition of a playback token that is generated in response to playback of the predetermined content.”

The easy way to circumvent this: don’t buy any Microsoft technology.