[Quote:]

When he first ran for Congress in Arizona nearly three decades ago, John McCain had one clear liability: he wasn’t from the state, and he could count the number of years he had lived there on a couple of fingers.

So his primary opponent, state senator Jim Mack, attacked him as a Johnny-come-lately. To counter the charge, at a candidate forum, McCain offered a decidedly pointed response. “I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things,” he said. “As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.”

for their freedom…

Obama has a big speech tonight. He has quite a bit of history to “beat”:

[Exactly 45 years ago today:]

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”²

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

[Quote:]

Texas once again led the nation with the highest percentage of residents without health insurance, a U.S. Census Bureau report showed Tuesday, although the same study also reports a slight dip last year in the percentage without coverage across the nation.

[..]

Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

“So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.”

[Quote:]

But doctored photographs are the least of our worries. If you want to trick someone with a photograph, there are lots of easy ways to do it. You don’t need Photoshop. You don’t need sophisticated digital photo-manipulation. You don’t need a computer. All you need to do is change the caption.

[The photographs presented by Colin Powell at the United Nations in 2003 provide several examples. Photographs that were used to justify a war. And yet, the actual photographs are low-res, muddy aerial surveillance photographs of buildings and vehicles on the ground in Iraq. I’m not an aerial intelligence expert. I could be looking at anything. It is the labels, the captions, and the surrounding text that turn the images from one thing into another.[6]

Photographs presented by Colin Powell at the United Nations in 2003. (U.S. Department of State)

Powell was arguing that the Iraqis were doing something wrong, knew they were doing something wrong, and were trying to cover their tracks. Later, it was revealed that the captions were wrong. There was no evidence of chemical weapons and no evidence of concealment.

Reinterpretation of photographs presented by Colin Powell, by Daniel Mooney.

There is a larger point. I don’t know what these buildings were really used for. I don’t know whether they were used for chemical weapons at one time, and then transformed into something relatively innocuous, in order to hide the reality of what was going on from weapons inspectors. But I do know that the yellow captions influence how we see the pictures. “Chemical Munitions Bunker” is different from “Empty Warehouse” which is different from “International House of Pancakes.” The image remains the same but we see it differently.[7]

Change the yellow labels, change the caption and you change the meaning of the photographs. You don’t need Photoshop. That’s the disturbing part. Captions do the heavy lifting as far as deception is concerned. The pictures merely provide the window-dressing. The unending series of errors engendered by falsely captioned photographs are rarely remarked on.

Another example:

[Quote:]

Don’t forget BS like the Tuvia Grossman incident, where the Associated Press put out a photo in which a big, mean, ugly looking Israeli cop in full body armor, screaming and waving a club, stood over a frail looking young man covered in blood sitting on the ground.

The caption read simply “An Israeli policeman and a Palestinian on the Temple Mount”.

Clearly this big hulking brute had been beating this poor defenseless Palestinian and was now threatening the photographer- the Guardian of Truth and Social Justice in a World Gone Mad- against taking a picture of this brutal act.

What actually happened was (according to Wikipedia):

On the eve of Rosh Hashanah 2000, Grossman hailed a taxi with two friends to visit the Western Wall. When the driver took a shortcut through the Arab neighborhood of Wadi Al-Joz, a mob of about 40 Arabs surrounded the taxi, smashed the windows, and dragged Grossman out, whereupon they beat him. The mob kicked him repeatedly, stabbed him once in the leg, and then pounded his head with rocks. Grossman managed to run to a nearby gas station, where he collapsed, and an Israeli policeman wielding a club protected him, threatening the mob. This was when the infamous picture was taken, by some freelance photographers who were at the gas station, of Grossman bleeding and crouched under the policeman, who is shouting and waving his club.

How do we know this?

His dad wrote a letter to the New York Times complaining about them running a photo implicating the police officer who had likely saved his son’s life with some horrific if unspecified act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuvia_Grossman

[Quote:]

A tropical storm warning is in effect for Haiti from the Dominican republic-Haiti border westward to le mole St. Nicholas. A tropical storm warning means that tropical storm conditions are expected within the warning area within the next 24 hours.

Check out the prediction:

The storm is expected to reach New Orleans on Monday, the same day President Bush is scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention and just in time for the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Great timing!

“Candidate McCain says he’d vote against the immigration bill Senator McCain wrote. (pause) Talk about being for it before you were against it! Before he debates Barack Obama, John McCain needs to finish the debate with himself.”

– who else but John Kerry

Even leaders in the oil industry know that Senator McCain has it wrong. We simply can’t drill our way to energy independence, even if you drilled in all of John McCain’s backyards, including the ones he can’t even remember.

– Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer

[Quote:]

Earlier this month a group of pharmacists and chemists published a study in which they found that cannabis is a source of antibacterial chemicals for multidrug resistant bacteria. If you are a pharmacists or chemist here is the actual study. A synopsis of the study for everyone else.

[Quote:]

If the pro/anti marijuana argument was a rational argument, it would’ve been resolved decades ago. Which brings to mind a recent comment from one of Canada’s top Conservative “thinkers” (a cabinet minister, I think) on the topic of safe injection sites (for heroin users) in Vancouver’s deep, dark Downtown Eastside:

“Rest assured, the final decision on this issue will not be based on science alone.”

[Quote:]

Oh ya, did I mention that this thing shoots video?!

[Quote:]

The FBI has arrested a 27-year-old American blogger for leaking some unreleased Guns N’ Roses tunes to the internet.

According to The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times, the Feds cuffed Culver City, California’s Kevin Cogill on Wednesday morning, two months after his web site Antiquiet served up nine tunes from “Chinese Democracy” – an album Axl Rose and various other people have been dawdling over for more than a decade.

[..]

Clearly, an online “Chinese Democracy” leak poses a serious threat to Guns N’ Roses and its label, Geffen Records. If web surfers actually hear the unreleased album, the mix n’ match band can no longer maintain the illusion that it isn’t complete shite. ®

FBI and Geffen Records to be applauded for their attempts to contain this tripe, hopefully they will now realize the danger and burn the master tapes too.

A propaganda war, that is:

[Quote:]

Soldiers at war rarely write magazine stories. But on July 13, 2007, a 24-year-old army private named Scott Thomas Beauchamp who had been serving in Iraq for about 10 months published a short, pseudonymous essay in the New Republic magazine that created a media firestorm.

[Quote:]

Jason Kottke (via Rex, via TechCrunch) points to a new feature on FriendFeed that allows users to “fake follow” people:

That means you can friend someone but you don’t see their updates. That way, it appears that you’re paying attention to them when you’re really not. Just like everyone does all the time in real life to maintain their sanity.

As duplicitous and sad as “fake following” sounds — and let’s be honest: the whole idea’s pathetic on a number of levels — for a certain kind of user, I can see why there’s a desire for this functionality. Especially on a site like FriendFeed, which has quickly become the platform of choice for the web’s least interesting narcissists — and the slow-witted woodland creatures who enjoy grooming their fur — this is a major breakthrough in the makebelieve friendship space. Yes, primate culture may be primitive, but it is not without its evolving needs.

Thing is, “fake following” is also not so far off from a more wholesome feature that I’ve been begging for on social networks for years now:

Any application that lets you “friend,” “follow,” or otherwise observe another user should include a prominent (and silent) “PAUSE” button.

I’ve been thinking about a “Pause” button for this weblog – the vacation was a very welcome break….

[Quote:]

The Mobile Marketing Association has published its guidelines for advertising pushed over Bluetooth connections, and considers anyone who hasn’t opted out to be fair game for spammers.

The guidelines are now available for public review until 26 September, and take a distinct step beyond the UK’s Direct Marketing Association (DMA) rules in that they consider any handset left in “discoverable” mode to be implicitly giving permission for pushed adverts – something the DMA explicitly rejects.

The document (pdf) has been produced by the “Proximity Committee”, a part of the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), and is mostly concerned with an explanation of what Bluetooth is and how it can effectively be used. It says that IMS Research reckons that in the US more than 60 per cent of handsets sport Bluetooth and 70 per cent in Europe, making it an attractive channel for pushed advertising.

Oh look, something useful that people use and enjoy, let’s fuck it and make it annoying….

The article mentions a website where “they’d love to hear your comments”, but I wouldn’t bother – there’s no point in trying to talk to spammers.

[Quote:]

Most of the big movie studios and many online movie retailers are preparing to to launch a new initiative tentatively called Open Market, first proposed last year by Sony Pictures, we’ve learned. All of the major studios besides those associated with Walt Disney are already on board and will be part of the announcements made next month.

At this point I stopped reading, looked at the name, and guessed that they wanted to close the market to anything but their own scheme. It turns out to be a correct guess:

Open Market is a set of policy decisions and a software and services framework that will allow interoperability of various formats and DRM schemes that are currently splintering the market. That splintering locks users into a single store and format, and is putting a stranglehold on widespread adoption of movie sales online. Multiple sources have indicated that the studios are putting their weight behind the initiative to avoid the fate of the music industry and as a last ditch effort to stop or slow non-DRM movie sales.

A key part of Open Market will be a neutral third party to manage device registrations and movie purchases/rentals to ensure interoperability. This “domain” provider will manage services that let users register devices (PCs, televisions, mobile devices, etc.). Any movie purchased from any service provider can then be watched on a registered device.

So unless you “register” your computer, TV, phone or DVD player with them, you won’t be able to use them?

Yeah, people will really like that and stop using torrents right away.

Also, take a look at the slides in the PDF: “iTunes is best example of the problem”… let me translate for you: “the iTunes business model works, but we‘re not making any money, Apple is. We hate that.”

[Quote:]

Almost everyone forgets a Web site password once in a while. When you do, you click on the familiar “Forgot your password?” link and, after entering your pet’s name, identifying your high school mascot or answering some other seemingly obscure questions, you can get back into your account.

But there’s a problem: A criminal can do that, too. With the help of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, personal trivia is getting less obscure all the time. You’d be surprised how easily someone can uncover Fido’s name or your alma mater with a little creative searching.

Some security researchers are beginning to sound the alarm about “password resetting” tools, suggesting they could be the weakest link in Web security.

I change my cat’s name every 3 months just to be on the safe side; yet ironically, that just seems to make my cat increasingly insecure.

[Quote:]

*ZA kiad w’-exùn ya tijuh, da ya-gAr’-eduketan zA da wa-tAgan lidla, kaz ‘ban iagnaran an wa-tAg kurrap…

In many large or even medium-sized IT projects, there exists a thermocline of truth, a line drawn across the organizational chart that represents a barrier to accurate information regarding the project’s progress. Those below this level tend to know how well the project is actually going; those above it tend to have a more optimistic (if unrealistic) view.

And every now and then this is visible to the outside world. Example: NASA

[Quote:]

Wow — a leading Republican appears to have just inadvertently admitted that the GOP’s spin machine set up to counter Barack Obama during the convention is a propaganda machine spewing nothing but lies.

The GOPer in question is Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams, who accidentally made the admission when describing the GOP’s war room in Denver set up to hammer Obama during convention week.

Wadhams described the GOP’s outfit thusly to the Denver Post: “Just consider this the Ministry of Truth.”

Um, as anybody who has ever read George Orwell knows, the Ministry of Truth exists to disseminate false propaganda about how great the ruling regime is, continuously rewriting both history and the present-day facts in order to maintain total control over the population.

It makes me wonder if Republicans have anything above a elementary school education when it comes to the history of totalitarian movements.

Last year, in an unusual display of ignorance, Fox News’ Sean Hannity announced that he would begin offering “Enemy of the State” awards to liberals he disapproves of. Hannity, never accused of being the sharpest crayon in the box, had no idea that the phrase has Stalinist origins, and quietly renamed his on-air segment, “Enemy of the Week.”

Morans.

[Quote:]

From the UK Telegraph:

“The US money supply has experienced the sharpest contraction in modern history, heightening the risk of a Wall Street crunch and a severe economic slowdown in coming months. Data compiled by Lombard Street Research shows that the M3 ”broad money” aggregates fell by almost $50bn in July, the biggest one-month fall since modern records began in 1959.

“Monthly data for July show that the broad money growth has almost collapsed,” said Gabriel Stein, the group’s leading monetary economist.” (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard,”Sharp US Money Supply contraction points to a Wall Street crunch ahead”, UK Telegraph)

The Telegraph confirms what many of the doomsayers have been saying for more than a year now; we’re facing a severe bout of deflation. The persistent credit-drain from rising foreclosures and deleveraging financial institutions is shrinking the money supply. Now it’s visible in the data. Bernanke’s low interest rates haven’t stopped the hemorrhaging; deflation is spreading like Kudzu. According to Evans-Pritchard, “The growth in bank loans has turned negative” (while) “the overall debt burden in the US economy is currently at record levels, raising concerns that a recession – if it occurs – could set off a sharp downward spiral.”

Just like Samsung did:

[Quote:]

ContactPoint will include the names, ages and addresses of all 11 million under-18s in England as well as information on their parents, GPs, schools and support services such as social workers.

The £224 million computer system was announced in the wake of the death of Victoria Climbié, who was abused and then murdered after a string of missed opportunities to intervene by the authorities, as a way to connect the different services dealing with children.

It has always been portrayed as a way for professionals to find out which other agencies are working with a particular child, to make their work easier and provide a better service for young people.

However, it has now emerged that police officers, council staff, head teachers, doctors and care workers will use the records to search for evidence of criminality and wrongdoing to help them launch prosecutions against those on the database – even long after they have reached adulthood.

[Quote:]

When CNN’s Walter Isaacson confronted John McCain about his professed love of the band of ABBA, which of course was a lame attempt to cater to “disaffected Hillary supporters” as his blogger Michael Goldfarb made clear, McCain (you guessed it) whipped out the trusty ol’ POW card to explain:

“What were you thinking?,” Isaacson asked him, looking incredulous.

“If there is anything I am lacking in, I’ve got to tell you, it is taste in music and art and other great things in life,” McCain joked. “I’ve got to say that a lot of my taste in music stopped about the time I impacted a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane and never caught up again.”

But, as Spencer Ackerman was quick to point out:

What? McCain was shot down in 1967. ABBA began making music in 1972. Don’t try this sh** on me, McCain! Your POW experience has nothing to do with your Partridgey musical taste.