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North Korea has the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear device. "The Pentagon's top military intelligence officer said yesterday that North Korea has the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear device, stunning senators he was addressing and prompting attempts by other defense and intelligence officials later to play down the remarks." Was Bill Clinton right or just an an appeaser?

But don't worry! Our CIA and our military have never failed us yet, and we have wise leaders: "No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people and the stability of the world than the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq." -- Donald Rumsfeld, testimony to Congress, Sept. 19, 2002. So, will we be protecting America from WMDs, that is, giving the "Gift of Democracy" in Pyongyang, or just buying off Mr. Kim again?
comment posted at 1:54 AM on Apr-29-05
comment posted at 6:25 AM on Apr-29-05

Want to see the results of all the hateful anti-gay rhetoric? While other forms of crime continued to fall, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs has documented a 4% increase in anti-LGBT crime in 2004, coming on the heels of a 26% increase in the last half of 2003. This spike in violence parallels the exact same period since the Right went into demonic, anti-gay hyperdrive following the Supreme Court's Lawrence v. Texas decision in July of 2003. Since then, church pews and the public airwaves have been awash in ugly, anti-gay rhetoric and fear-mongering. "These words obviously do not just vanish into the ether - as intended, they are absorbed and become fuel and justification for violence. To say otherwise defies reality. -- The Matt Foreman, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (via think-bomb)
And these are just the reported incidents.
comment posted at 10:29 PM on Apr-28-05
comment posted at 11:10 PM on Apr-28-05
comment posted at 11:50 PM on Apr-28-05

Capt. America and Spiderman support the troops, how about you (pdf)? America Supports You! Get a free comic book, dogtag, or maybe even a free body bag.
comment posted at 10:38 PM on Apr-28-05

Focus on the family is looking for a Macintosh specialist...
"This position is responsible for overseeing the smooth performance of the Macintosh systems and network, serving the needs of the users, and implementing necessary changes. Responsibilities:
Is a consistent witness for Jesus Christ; maintains a courteous, Christ-like attitude in dealing with people within and outside of Focus; adheres to the Standard of Moral Conduct and Statement of Faith; upholds Focus on the Family's ministry in prayer. Demonstrates behaviors aligned with FOF core values."
[via Macintouch]
comment posted at 10:35 PM on Apr-28-05

Free stream of Nine Inch Nail's "With Teeth". Trent and the boys have set up a free stream of next week's long-awaited With Teeth album over on MySpace. More and more major label artists are taking the Wilco approach to giving away content to try and increase sales, with Rachael Yamagata and Deftones side-project Team Sleep also using MySpace.
comment posted at 6:59 PM on Apr-27-05

"The haggis was pronounced excellent by all that ate it, foreigners and Koreans, including the Vice-Minister." A diplomat describes opening the British embassy in Pyongyang. Direct link (rtf) here.
comment posted at 10:12 PM on Apr-26-05

An insightful piece of poetry criticism by Adam Kirsch encapsulates the work of Charles Bukowski, popular poet with MeFi's and others. Camile Paglia has a go at poetry crit in her latest, Break, Blow, Burn. I read the Kirsch piece because I have a passing familiarity with Bukowski, and if I saw someone reading a volume, I'd have some snap insight into what their interests may be. Though I often judge a reader by their book's cover, I could do this with very few poetry books, and I can't remember seeing anyone with a poetry book, or telling me about a poetry book in a long time. While some of us read for pleasure, we probably aren't reading poetry. The slam poetry movement of a few years ago seems to have lost its media fire. The death of poetry is periodically announced, and others disagree. My casual observation is that many poetry lovers actually write poetry, and are not students of the genre. Poems are short, it's easy to call something a poem, and it may make the writer feel better to write one out. Rarely are they good, and rarer still will they find an audience outside of web communities of other poetry writers. Can vigorous and accessible poetry criticism revive poetry readership? Does anyone who does not write poems read poetry, especially unfamiliar poetry? Will anyone cop to writing it but not reading it? And should we care?
comment posted at 10:21 PM on Apr-26-05
comment posted at 11:00 PM on Apr-26-05

For young deserters, refuge is hard to find It seemed like a drastic but simple solution: a step over the border into a country that had offered sanctuary before to Americans fleeing their homeland. Instead, the growing band of US soldiers who have sought political refuge in Canada after defying orders to serve in Iraq have found themselves in a political limbo.
comment posted at 7:41 PM on Apr-25-05

A contrarian review of Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat" - "It is a tale of a man who walks 10 feet in front of his house armed with a late-model Blackberry and comes back home five minutes later to gush to his wife that hospitals now use the internet to outsource the reading of CAT scans." Having watched Friedman flog this book on seemingly dozens of talk shows in the last month, I can't say I disagree...
comment posted at 6:31 PM on Apr-25-05
comment posted at 5:36 AM on Apr-26-05

Learning English with the CBC. Learn about Canadian history and improve your English skills with a series of audio and video clips, as well as quizzes and exercises. Topics include Terry Fox: A Marathon of Hope, Arctic Winter Games: The Olympics of the North, and Maple Syrup: A Taste of Canada, among others.
comment posted at 2:38 AM on Apr-26-05

Celebrity Mefi? Arianna Huffington is starting a "celebrity group blog." Contributors will include Walter Cronkite, David Mamet, Albert Brooks, Nora Ephron, Warren Beatty, James Fallows, Vernon Jordan, Rob Reiner, Diane Keaton, Norman Mailer, Bobby Kennedy, Tina Brown, John Cusack, Gary Hart, Mike Nichols...etc. According to a leaked email, Arianna is pitching the "Huffington Post" (ugh) to contributors as "a collective endeavor that can enliven — and possibly even shift — the national conversation."
comment posted at 11:47 PM on Apr-25-05

The only rule I can tell you is this one. In the vein of self-modifying games such as Nomic, 1000 Blank White Cards, Fluxx, and Cosmic Encounter, comes Mao: the game where the only way to learn the rules is by banging your head against them. Repeatedly.
comment posted at 2:31 AM on Apr-25-05

Get Back in the Box says Douglas Rushkoff in his upcoming book of the same name. Kris Krug interviewed Rushkoff last week just after he wrapped up writing. Apparently the author is going to explore how we're undergoing a renaissance of collaboration where identity is defined by connection to others. Douglas seems to be pulling together a lot of ideas that have been bubbling up in the blogosphere (a connected creative/technology class, social networks) but is business ready to hear his message? Sounds like he'll be well received by many webby people, but it remains to be seen how long the traditional definitions he challenges will remain - one generation, two maybe?

You may remember Rushkoff from the PBS Frontline series' Merchants of Cool and Persuaders. He's been discussed quite a bit before here on MeFi, 9 times in fact.
comment posted at 7:34 AM on Apr-23-05

Prime Minister Paul Martin addresses the sponsorship scandal with a televised speech to the Canadian people. The Opposition is calling for Liberal blood. Here's some political fun from North of the Border. Will the Gomery Inquiry reveal the Liberals as a crooked party or did they just get caught for something every party does? This is stuff I though only happened to other countries...boy, was I wrong!
comment posted at 9:05 PM on Apr-21-05
comment posted at 9:52 PM on Apr-21-05
comment posted at 9:54 PM on Apr-21-05

One key games. Retro Remakes, a reverse-engineer gaming siteand One Switch, an accessibility site, have launched a competition for the best game that can be played with a single key. There's still time to enter, and some entries have already been posted to the forums.
comment posted at 6:39 PM on Apr-21-05

Did the new Pope swing the Presidential election last year? After brown-nosing the Vatican on the grounds of being pro-life President Bush convinced then-Cardinal Ratzinger to work on the American Catholic Church on his behalf. Ratzinger's response? This memo where Ratzi claimed that anyone (especially a Catholic politician - like Kerry) who campaigned and voted pro-choice was not only on the side of evil but was unworthy of receiving Communion and Americans probably shouldn't vote for him. According to Salon, this was perhaps what was behind Bush's 6 point increase in Catholic support from 2000, and the difference in the 2004 election.
comment posted at 1:24 AM on Apr-22-05

Metropolis ex nihilo? Construction of New Songdo City, South Korea, is now underway. Within 10 years, a fully planned city of 100,000 people will spring up on a man-made island. It is intended to be a new, multi-national commercial hub for its booming Asian region. The developers say all the right things - cultural facilities, mixed use buildings, ample greenspace, etc. - but can a diverse, livable city really be so easily manufactured?
comment posted at 3:01 AM on Apr-21-05

Happy 420 day! Although many have (wrongly) believed that 420 had something to do with police code relating to marijuana offenses or 4/20 being the dates that Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrisson, and John Belushi died; this infamous number really was simply the time that several San Rafael high school students would meet after school to get baked.
comment posted at 6:29 PM on Apr-21-05

Cartoon Fridge has streaming episodes of the Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama, and King of the Hill, among others. They have quite a comprehensive listing of shows, (The Simpsons has all the episodes up to Season 12) and if you're on broadband, they load pretty fast. Mozilla and Opera supported as well!
comment posted at 11:55 PM on Apr-19-05

BenedictXVI.com registered a few weeks ago by our very own rcade. He hedged his bets by registering six domains in all, and now is being called out for popesquatting.
comment posted at 4:35 PM on Apr-21-05
comment posted at 4:36 PM on Apr-21-05

Flickr Doubles the Stakes with their new offerings for Pro users. People with existing Pro accounts will have two GB of upload capacity per month, a subscription length of double what they paid for, and two free pro accounts to gift to friends.
comment posted at 5:57 AM on Apr-19-05
comment posted at 11:00 PM on Apr-19-05

Reports of recent Anti-Japanese demonstrations in China lack any details about the content in the disputed history text books. Is it related to the Nanjing Massacre, which Iris Chang wrote about in her much contested book "The Rape of Nanking"? The Chinese government is certainly not acting as a shining example of upholding human rights by any means, but does that deprive its people from the right to have part of their history at least adequately remembered ? And is the Chinese Government using this collective wound to further its own national interests such as keeping Japan from joining the UNSC?
comment posted at 1:30 AM on Apr-17-05
comment posted at 10:59 PM on Apr-17-05
comment posted at 11:15 PM on Apr-17-05
comment posted at 4:58 PM on Apr-18-05
comment posted at 4:38 AM on Apr-22-05
comment posted at 11:35 PM on Apr-25-05

Do you want to see a photo of Tony Danza in the nude? It's from when he was younger... and he's uncut. Ok, talk to you later.
comment posted at 12:18 AM on Apr-17-05

So Google is now accepting video submissions to their Google Video search. But according to this blogger, Google's terms of service (which you have to create an account to view) are excessive. And I think he might be right.
comment posted at 11:37 PM on Apr-14-05

Who were your first ancestors? Tracking ancient ancestors and the migration of ancient peoples through DNA. Progressive maps from 200,000 years to 10,0000 years ago show the movement of our "tribes" since Adam.
comment posted at 4:11 PM on Apr-13-05

Surround sound for laptops? Does your laptop computer insult your ears with sound quality thinner than a politician's integrity?
comment posted at 6:21 AM on Apr-13-05

Thought you knew the first wave L.A. punk scene? Knew Belinda Carlisle was a Germs drummer, Pat Smear became Nirvana's guitarist, Henry Rollins was not the lead singer of Black Flag? Think... Again. New book out today.
comment posted at 5:33 PM on Apr-12-05
comment posted at 6:20 PM on Apr-12-05
comment posted at 11:45 PM on Apr-12-05
comment posted at 4:07 PM on Apr-13-05
comment posted at 11:59 PM on Apr-13-05
comment posted at 11:59 PM on Apr-13-05

"This is basically boomer rock 'n' roll and more recent music out of Nashville made for boomers. It's safe, it's reliable, it's loving. What I mean to say is, it's feel-good music. The Sex Pistols it's not." 3 things dear to mefites hearts. The music (NYT) on George W's ipod.
comment posted at 7:39 PM on Apr-12-05

How do you make a “trusted system”? A planning and organisational system which can be relied upon to contain your events, tasks, projects and thoughts?... One of the biggest obstacles for many people is how to create a system that is always there, at the ready, and worthy of your trust.
comment posted at 2:47 AM on Apr-12-05

storTroopers are back :This is the storTrooper version of me. Get your own here. You'll need Java, too. What does your storTrooper look like?
comment posted at 10:01 PM on Apr-10-05

The professor of tipping with tips (pdf) on the age old art of tipping(pdf)
comment posted at 10:00 PM on Apr-10-05