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Aperture is Apple's new $500 pro-photography tool. Apperantly it totaly sucks
comment posted at 12:26 PM on Dec-5-05
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comment posted at 1:25 PM on Dec-5-05

America's hopes today for an orderly exit from Iraq depend completely on the emergence of a viable Iraqi security force. There is no indication that such a force is about to emerge. As a matter of unavoidable logic, the United States must therefore choose one of two difficult alternatives: It can make the serious changes including certain commitments to remain in Iraq for many years that would be necessary to bring an Iraqi army to maturity. Or it can face the stark fact that it has no orderly way out of Iraq, and prepare accordingly.

Why Iraq Has No Army   [pdf]
via Small Wars Center of Excellence, an Official Marine Corps Web Site
See also Why the Strong Lose   [pdf]   More Inside
comment posted at 12:07 PM on Dec-5-05
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comment posted at 3:21 PM on Dec-5-05

Does God Play Dice?
comment posted at 9:30 PM on Dec-3-05
comment posted at 8:36 AM on Dec-4-05
comment posted at 8:50 AM on Dec-4-05
comment posted at 3:08 PM on Dec-4-05

Who owns the internets? The 2005 World Summit on the Information Information Societies seems to have left a number of nations with a bad taste in their mouth. ICANN emerged the apparent winner. Of course, you can always blame Bush. (first phase of wsis previously discussed here)
comment posted at 1:33 PM on Dec-3-05

An Open Letter to Larry the Cable Guy by David Cross
comment posted at 1:24 PM on Dec-3-05
comment posted at 1:38 PM on Dec-3-05

Acquitted of rape on basis of "sexsomnia" defense. Ontario resident Jan Luedecke said his unbidden penetration wasn't rape because he was asleep at the time. A judge agreed that "sexsomnia" is an illness. The websites which purport it to be a legitimate illness don't necessarily inspire confidence, and, unsurprisingly, some people are less than inspired. Meanwhile, the victim is appealing the ruling.
comment posted at 10:05 PM on Dec-2-05
comment posted at 10:16 PM on Dec-2-05

truthdig --drilling beneath the headlines. A new webmagazine, offering expert in-depth coverage of current affairs as well as a variety of thoughtful, provocative content assembled from a progressive point of view. The site is built around major “digs,” led by authorities in their fields, who will drill down into contemporary topics and assemble packages of content... Robert Scheer is editor in chief (you may know him from the SF Chronicle). The current featured "dig" is on religion and homosexuality.
comment posted at 1:11 AM on Dec-3-05

Dear Valued Hybrid Customer... I can't tell if this is a joke or something. As rhetoric, it's well done. As a reasoned argument it falls apart if you actually know anything at all about hybrids.
comment posted at 4:54 PM on Dec-2-05

Conan O'Brien runs the one Walker, Texas Ranger clip that he never dared run before...
comment posted at 12:51 PM on Dec-2-05
comment posted at 3:17 PM on Dec-2-05

NewsFilter: UFO (missle) exhaust seen by pilot Have the aliens landed, and are shooting at planes with unidentified flying objects? Or is it the 'terrorists'?
Don't worry citizens: FBI agents and Homeland Security officials spent the weekend investigating the report of a possible missile fired at an American Airlines.
comment posted at 10:22 AM on Dec-2-05
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comment posted at 12:19 AM on Dec-3-05

"I sat down to it with my bottle of wine, a bowl of rice, salt and pepper at hand. I had thought about this and planned it for a long time, and now I was going to do it. I was going to do it, furthermore -- I had promised and told myself -- with a completely casual, open, and objective mind. But I was soon to discover that I had bluffed and deceived myself a little in pretending so detached an attitude." The problems of researching what you and I actually taste like. [Previous threads]. [Via]
comment posted at 12:49 PM on Dec-2-05

Gulf of Tonkin Intelligence 'Deliberately Skewed'

The National Security Agency has released hundreds of pages of long-secret documents on the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident that played a critical role near the beginning of the Vietnam War. ... The most provocative document is a 2001 article [PDF] in which an agency historian argued that the agency's intelligence officers "deliberately skewed" the evidence passed on to policymakers on the crucial question of whether North Vietnamese ships attacked U.S. destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964. Based on the mistaken belief that such an attack had occurred, President Lyndon Johnson ordered air strikes on North Vietnam, and Congress passed a broad resolution authorizing military action.

[more inside]
comment posted at 10:07 AM on Dec-2-05

The internet as repository for odd theories. Sure we have all discussed the time cube before, but what about Holographic Energy Beams and Julie Andrews?
comment posted at 9:58 AM on Dec-2-05

A memo from the Department of Justice in Texas' voting division reveals that, back in 2003 during the Texas GOP's redistricting push, the division unanimously agreed that the redistricting plan sponsored by the state GOP and Rep. Tom DeLay was illegal under the Voting Rights Act. The plan was pushed through anyway, being the most effective in securing additional House seats for the GOP.
comment posted at 1:31 PM on Dec-2-05
comment posted at 2:08 PM on Dec-2-05

Why SETI's search for intelligent extraterrestrial life is different from the work of proponents of Intelligent Design. An interesting bit of argumentation regarding the distinction between the simple signals searched for by SETI and the complex signals used in arguments for ID.
comment posted at 10:13 AM on Dec-2-05
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comment posted at 1:43 PM on Dec-2-05

It's Beginning To Look a Lot Like Christmas. [.wmv file]
comment posted at 12:47 AM on Dec-2-05
comment posted at 12:57 AM on Dec-2-05

Remember that Shining trailer from a few weeks back? Now they've done it with Big. (embedded WMV)
comment posted at 12:50 AM on Dec-2-05

Blixa Bargeld reads the Hornbach Catalog. In a series of ads, finalists in 2004 for an EPICA award, the poet and musician Blixa Bargeld, known primarily as a leader of the industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, read aloud descriptions of home improvement products. With hilarious results.
comment posted at 9:44 PM on Dec-1-05

Finally! The link between Adolf Hitler and Julie Andrews explained! I can't believe it never occurred to me before. [via memepool]
comment posted at 9:39 PM on Dec-1-05

Are you in your early 40s? Do you resemble the God Apollo yet feel a certain dissastisfaction (like a splinter in your mind) toward photos of yourself? You are not alone: "I have enclosed below a series of pictures to show how the US government starting around 1994 went back in time with remote sensing and holographic radiation longitudinal emf and sound wave holographic energy beams as shown in the movie time tunnel to place different computer generated holographic archetypes of different Nordic, Celtic, and Aryan faces and other attributes around my body as if I were a microcosm of the center of the universe, Adam, and God, to change the genetic attributes, facial form, eye color, hair color, voice sound, and many other body attributes throughout my life year by year from my birth (1962, Jan 23 Midnight) to the present representing correlation's between the years in my life and the ages of evolution and history from the beginning of time to the present." [via Waxy]
comment posted at 6:46 PM on Dec-1-05

"[S]ave more lives" is what George Bush pledged to do in a speech today about the AIDS epidemic. With more people living with AIDS in the world than ever before, is the US's problematic stance of promoting an ABC policy and other controversial policies working? Or is it an appropriate response to a culturally touchy topic that some oddball health officials in African nations are still coming to grips with?
comment posted at 1:52 PM on Dec-1-05

The Beerbelly A removable spare tire that serves a stealth beverage.
comment posted at 2:08 PM on Dec-1-05

Everybody's an expert, but does expertise promote better predictions?
comment posted at 1:01 PM on Dec-1-05

Pentagon bribery scandal -- Iraqi journalists bought out. Officials in Washington have admitted that the US military has bribed Iraqi journalists with under-the-table payoffs of up to $200 a month -- twice the average Iraqi monthly income -- for producing upbeat newspaper, radio and television reports about the war in Iraq. This follows a similar report yesterday that the military secretly paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of pro-American articles written by the US Information Operations Task Force in Baghdad. A Pentagon spokesman described the report as "troubling". "This article raises some questions as to whether or not some of the practices that are described in there are consistent with the principles of this department."
comment posted at 12:30 PM on Dec-1-05

"Heard 'Em Say" is Kanye West's latest video, animated by the legendary Bill Plympton.
comment posted at 6:42 PM on Dec-1-05

"This is the day that the Lord has made! We shall rejoice and be glad in the new Wal-Mart that the Lord has made."
comment posted at 2:13 AM on Dec-1-05

MoAD is San Francisco's newest museum. The Museum of the African Diaspora is the latest addition to the SOMA neighborhood's expanding cultural riches, and promises to be fascinating (and, as far as I can tell, unique in the world). [more inside]
comment posted at 2:20 AM on Dec-1-05

39¢ Heroes. On January 8, the price of a First Class US Postage Stamp will creep up another two cents. But fear not, True Believers, because 20 of those new stamps will feature costumed crusaders from DC Comics "including Superman, Wonder Woman, Plastic Man, Batman, Green Arrow and many more." (Newsarama has more on the story, including the featured cover images for each hero.)
comment posted at 12:21 PM on Nov-30-05

Ho! Ho! Ho! Friend or Foe! Falwell fighting for Holy Holiday! Bill O'Reilly joins the fray! But wait, where does the White House stand on this vital issue?
comment posted at 12:24 PM on Nov-30-05
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comment posted at 1:09 PM on Nov-30-05

Could Alzheimer's be a form of diabetes?
Well, I'm not looking forward to taking those insulin shots....via Medgadget
comment posted at 8:23 AM on Nov-30-05