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Ever felt alone? No, I mean really alone, as in "13 year old girl has forgotten the lyrics to the national anthem in front of 20,000 restless fans on national TV" alone? Natalie Gilbert has, but suddenly someone was there, and she wasn't alone(3.8MB .asf video).(via PLA)
comment posted at 4:00 PM on Apr-30-03

Stip Naked and Walk, Thief. On the chests of the men had been scrawled an Arabic phrase that translates as "Ali Baba - Thief."
comment posted at 4:10 PM on Apr-28-03
comment posted at 8:21 AM on Apr-29-03
comment posted at 8:24 AM on Apr-29-03

Student kills principal, self at school. "A heavily armed 14-year-old boy shot and killed his school principal inside a crowded junior high cafeteria Thursday morning, then killed himself, authorities said. " I'm finding nothing else about this other than the AP story. I'm curious what they mean by "heavily armed."
comment posted at 2:09 PM on Apr-24-03
comment posted at 2:57 PM on Apr-24-03

Jules is a thief. The fact that "all the embedded reporters were doing it" does not make it right. Presumably the US soldiers who were overseeing the embedded reporters knew of this kind of cultural theft -- more than likely, many were a party to it themselves. I'm sending him an email to remind him of that fact, and I will also contact his bosses, urging disciplinary action.
comment posted at 2:00 PM on Apr-23-03

The White Stripes will be appearing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, for the entire week, starting tonight. The band is promoting their new album called Elephant.
comment posted at 3:11 PM on Apr-22-03

I Feel, Therefore I Am. Consider the work of Dr. Antonio Damasio, humanist and neuroscientist, who has turned the Mind and Body debate between René Descartes and Benedictus de Spinoza upon its head--or at least the heads of Phineas Gage and one Elliott--via his research and writings such as The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, Descartes' Error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain and Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. He's influenced writers like Ian McEwan and David Lodge, and via his thoughts on the perception of music, inspired a composition. (More Inside)
comment posted at 5:58 PM on Apr-19-03
comment posted at 2:21 PM on Apr-20-03

Metallica's St. Anger is receiving rave reviews and there seems to be a great deal of hype, but none of it from a very well known source except the MTV review.

Oddly, the only english website with a review that isn't a blog is MTV's. A google search does reveal a few alleged foreign reviews, though.

Given Metallica's record of rampant pursuit of paranoid lawsuits, should one be skeptical that all of this hype is real? Given rock and radio's sordid past and present - I don't think I'm alone in my doubt.
comment posted at 5:19 PM on Apr-16-03
comment posted at 5:21 PM on Apr-16-03

Homeland Security Dept. Fills their Privacy czar post with....(drumroll)...Nuala O'Connor Kelly, formerly the Privacy Officer of Doubleclick. Yes that doubleclick, and that one too. Also this one. I feel safer already. Is it still April 1st somewhere in the world?
comment posted at 4:42 PM on Apr-16-03

Weapons of mass destruction free mid-east
sound like a good idea - perhaps could lead to other countries in hot zones giving up their WMDs as well? I wonder if other countries in the region would consider giving up their stockpiles?
comment posted at 4:53 PM on Apr-16-03

Euphoria in Baghdad • In scenes reminiscent of the Cold War's final days, citizens are filling the streets, throwing flowers, tearing down monuments of Saddam Hussein and any reminders of his long, brutal regime. As this is a moment of reckoning for many people, a lot of questions lie ahead: Was it a risk worth taking, despite the casualties? Could any amount of liberation and jubilation compensate for those casualties? Will this be a celebrated historical moment, or the staging ground for new aggressions? However one feels about the war, it sure is good to see all the smiling Iraqi faces.
comment posted at 11:42 AM on Apr-9-03
comment posted at 2:34 PM on Apr-9-03
comment posted at 2:52 PM on Apr-9-03
comment posted at 3:01 PM on Apr-9-03

When will Rainier erupt? Last night, I dreamt that Mt. Rainier erupted. Now, I don't believe in prescient dreams, but if this were to happen, and it has, we in Seattle might not need to leave Seattle, but those closer to the mountain are probably going to want to get out of the way quickly. I wonder if an earthquake could trigger an eruption, sort of a double-whammy natural disaster that would instantly transform Seattle into the least desirable place to live in the country?
comment posted at 3:19 PM on Apr-5-03
comment posted at 10:15 PM on Apr-5-03
comment posted at 10:31 PM on Apr-5-03

Today's Grand National Today 40 horses were forced around an arduous and often fatal 'race course'. This year, only one horse was killed. How can anyone think that this is a sport?
comment posted at 11:52 AM on Apr-5-03

Marines taste defeat... Touching. Reminds me of this, which isn't quite the same but altogether much more extraordinary.
comment posted at 3:13 PM on Apr-3-03

Human Filter. "U.S. troops killed seven Iraqi women and children at a checkpoint Monday when the Iraqis' van would not stop as ordered, a military official said."
comment posted at 3:07 PM on Mar-31-03

You may remember the Ohio National Guardsman changed his name to a Optimus Prime. He is a firefighter deployed to the gulf. Well now he has a weblog. You can also check out some photos of him on his website.
comment posted at 12:23 PM on Mar-30-03

“Takoma, the Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphin, had been in Iraq for 48 hours when he went missing on his first operation to snoop out mines… Takoma has now been missing for 48 hours and the solitary figure of Petty Officer Whitaker could be seen yesterday patting the water, calling his name and offering his favourite fish, but there was no response.”
comment posted at 6:33 PM on Mar-29-03

Iraq T-Shirts - Nuff said.
comment posted at 4:04 PM on Mar-29-03
comment posted at 5:14 PM on Mar-29-03
comment posted at 6:29 PM on Mar-29-03
comment posted at 6:47 PM on Mar-29-03

Why the war has become a clusterf**k On my way back from lunch I was listening to Fresh Air and an interview with Christopher Dickey. The things he was saying about the motives of work-a-day Iraqis came as a big surprise to me. In particular: It sounds like they'll keep fighting us long after Saddam and his army are gone. [more inside]
comment posted at 2:40 PM on Mar-28-03
comment posted at 2:42 PM on Mar-28-03
comment posted at 3:52 PM on Mar-28-03
comment posted at 4:12 PM on Mar-28-03

Unless you take long breaks from your busy internet-trolling schedule to read print media, you did not see this chilling litany of stupidity from Elsa Walsh's 3/24 New Yorker profile of Bandar bin Sul "The meeting was scheduled to last twenty minutes, but Bush and Abdullah talked for two hours. At one point, the Crown Prince handed Bush the photographs of the dead Palestinian children. Do you think it's right? he asked. Bush appeared surprised by the photographs and his eyes seemed to well up. One person familiar with the conversation summarized Bush's comments: "I want peace. I don't want to see any people killed on both sides. I think God loves me. I think God loves the Palestinians. I think God loves the Israelis. We cannot allow this to continue." At one point, Bush told Abdullah that he believed Muslims and Israelis were all God's children and that God didn't want to see children from either side die." (Link via Atrios)
comment posted at 8:17 PM on Mar-27-03

Where did those chemical and biological weapons come from?
”According to the December declaration, treated with much derision from the Bush administration, U.S. and Western companies played a key role in building Hussein's war machine. The 1,200-page document contains a list of Western corporations and countries -- as well as individuals -- that exported chemical and biological materials to Iraq in the past two decades.”

I’ve always been surprised that this type of report doesn’t get more attention. During the UN hearings I half expected the Administration to level with the world and simply say: ”We know they have the stuff because we sold it to them.”
comment posted at 3:41 PM on Mar-26-03
comment posted at 4:08 PM on Mar-26-03
comment posted at 6:04 PM on Mar-26-03
comment posted at 7:20 PM on Mar-26-03
comment posted at 8:16 PM on Mar-26-03

'Huge' Chemical Weapons Plant Found in Iraq - and Hans Blix is somewhere redfaced...
comment posted at 7:41 PM on Mar-23-03

It is no accident that the core countries of "Old Europe," France and Germany, oppose us. "It is no accident that the core countries of Old Europe, France and Germany, oppose us. Between them, they have been responsible for every major European conflict since the Napoleonic era. Those who now accuse us of aggression bear the weight of hundreds of millions of corpses." What a superb piece of writing.
comment posted at 3:54 PM on Mar-20-03
comment posted at 5:44 PM on Mar-20-03
comment posted at 6:39 PM on Mar-20-03
comment posted at 6:42 PM on Mar-20-03

He's no Stormin' Norman, but his Battalion of Greeters will takedown Saddam and Rollback Prices! Check out the extensive G.I. Joe filecard gallery at Yo Joe.com to harken back when times were a little bit more simple, and our guns fired Laser Beams. Also if you have a chance see the commercial archive for the comic books (with songs for each one!). I hope you'll learn something from all of this, and knowing is half the battle.
comment posted at 2:29 PM on Mar-20-03

Wild West Yorkshire Nature Diary. 'My diary describes a year in the life of woodland, field, marsh, river, canal . . . and a fairly wild back garden . . . in the Calder valley in coal measures country near Wakefield.'
Richard Bell's nature diary has been online since 1998.
The site's links page leads to more nature diaries and related resources :
Ackworth School's natural history diary, Roseberry Topping, an environmentally friendly slug trap, Yorkshire dialect verse, wildscapes from Texas, Notes from Pure Land Mountain (a journal from countryside Japan), and more.
Although it's not linked, An English Country Garden, chronicling a garden in a small village in Dorset, would not be out of place here; neither would Blackberry Creek Journal, 'a country newsletter about the seasons, animals, gardens and people of a small Michigan farm'. There is a huge collection of gardening journals and homepages here. [more inside]
comment posted at 1:45 PM on Mar-20-03

Muslim men have been asked to undergo "Special Registration", a Department of Homeland Security program in its early stages. Men who hail from 25 targeted countries are required to be fingerprinted, photographed, give up credit card and bank account numbers, and are then given a registration number. So far, 46 people have been arrested, but none for terrorist-related activities. Is this an acceptable security precaution or the first sign of history repeating itself?
comment posted at 5:13 PM on Mar-19-03
comment posted at 5:37 PM on Mar-19-03
comment posted at 6:25 PM on Mar-19-03