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Insulating Bush Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews
comment posted at 12:45 PM on Mar-30-06
comment posted at 12:56 PM on Mar-30-06

Engadget turns 2. There are lots of famous birthdays in March, but I'm willing to bet none of them had cakes quite as elaborate as the ones Engadet fans made.
comment posted at 9:58 PM on Mar-16-06
comment posted at 9:59 PM on Mar-16-06

to my left is a youngish software developer from Yokohama, incandescent with rage. To my right is the finance officer of a major games publisher. Worryingly, he is tapping sums into a pocket calculator and shaking his head...

It shouldn't have been a surprise (...) but yesterday's announcement (pdf) from Sony has crushed 14 year-olds of all ages. The Playstation 3 is shaping up as a great IT Disaster. The 'Times' man in Tokyo - Leo Lewis - elaborates, muses on being a games geek in Akihabara (with cash and a proper job) and explains the delights of "beer flavored alcohol", just what we need to drown our sorrows.
comment posted at 5:20 AM on Mar-16-06

It's 1968. Hippies are everywhere, and they're reading underground comics. Your name is Joe Simon. You want to create a mainstream comic book with a hippie as a hero. What do you come up with? Brother Power the Geek.

It only lasted two issues. Of course, it did a little better than the Black Bomber, a white bigot who sometimes turned into an African-American superhero. That comic was never printed.
comment posted at 5:13 AM on Mar-16-06

Amazon launched S3: Unlimited Simple Storage. Take advantage of Amazon's global infrastructure to serve content, store data, and serve bittorrents.
comment posted at 3:45 AM on Mar-16-06

It turns out, in the PC game business, no copy protection doesn't mean everyone pirates your game. This makes some people angry. From the article:

"For example, we were quite disturbed to discover that the company that makes Starforce provided a working URL to a list of pirated GalCiv II torrents. I'm not sure whether what they did was illegal or not, but it's troubling nevertheless and was totally unnecessary."

via digg
comment posted at 12:25 AM on Mar-12-06

danah boyd on MySpace - "In MySpace, comments are a form of cultural currency."
comment posted at 1:44 AM on Mar-9-06
comment posted at 2:36 PM on Mar-9-06

Ascaris lumbricoides. According to estimates, about 1.5 billion people--about a quarter of the earth's population--are hosts to the Ascaris lumbricoides parasitic worm. Ascaris worms can grow to be 18 inches in length, and use their host's windpipe and esophagus to migrate between the small intestine and the lungs. A single human host may support dozen of large worms, which can be contracted by contact with fecal matter, animals, or undercooked pork. Under some circumstances (the worms dislike anesthesia, for example) one or more worms may exit from the mouth (a horrifying image), or the anus (one of the most disgusting images I have ever seen, and not safe for work, obviously). Here, the removal of a worm is caught on video (Realplayer). Too disgusting to post? Almost. But 1.5 billion people have got these in their bodies right now. That's what's grosser than gross.
comment posted at 1:06 AM on Mar-5-06

It's been a while since the glory days of Raw Magazine, but when it was still published the cartoonist whose work I found most intriguing was the pointillist-styled, celebrity obsessed world of Drew Friedman.
comment posted at 2:32 AM on Mar-5-06

The Greatest American
comment posted at 11:59 AM on Mar-3-06

ParisParamus could be "spiritually blind" and "a failure as a human being." Perhaps OmieWise "can make more money accidentally than you can on purpose." God might not answer Asparagirl's prayers. And Amberglow, he might even be the Antichrist. But Hallelujah! Rejoice! It turns out they can get into Heaven after all! (But not everyone agrees.)
comment posted at 7:33 PM on Mar-1-06

The Drunk Dial It's embedded video. And NSFW (audio only). And it goes on waaaaay too long. And I'm going to get flamed to death on my first post. But it had to be done, and I am the man to do it.
comment posted at 10:59 AM on Feb-27-06

Another favorite old actor has shuffled off the mortal coil. I will always remember Darren McGavin best as The Old Man, Ralphie Parker's father, in the best Christmas movie ever made (so says I!), but he had a long and active career in films and television.

Sigh. I hope there is lots and lots of turkey in heaven, and that the Bumpuses' dogs are nowhere to be found.
comment posted at 12:57 AM on Feb-26-06

Call him Mr. Limpet, Mr. Furley, Wormie, Les Calhoun, or Barney Fife. Actor Don Knotts has passed away at 81.
comment posted at 2:30 AM on Feb-26-06

Will Malcolm Gladwell's blog be as good as his New Yorker articles and books? Will it be better? I'm always fascinated when "big name" people start blogging. Will he be interesting and personal, dry and professional, or will the blog crash and burn?
comment posted at 1:29 AM on Feb-24-06

Interesting (Norton?) Bug If you're using norton, you might just have fallen off the internet. Or something. Try this on your friends!
comment posted at 12:32 AM on Feb-23-06

Kottke ends the micropatron experiment. After a year (and $39,900), Jason decides that loafing around collecting paypal payments is just too much work.
comment posted at 5:19 AM on Feb-23-06

Jack Hamm Religious Cartoons. Hamm's art instruction books, including Cartooning the Head and Figure, have been widely influential among a generation of illustrators, Simpson's creator Matt Groening among them. Hamm began his cartooning career in the late 1930s and founded "The Jack Hamm Show," one of the first television art programs, which aired in the Dallas, Houston and Waco, Texas, TV markets.
comment posted at 11:39 PM on Feb-21-06

Web2.0 hits the skids. Someone has finally taken the Web2.0 trend to its logical conclusion. Good luck to him, I say. My only question - why didn't 37signals think of it first?
comment posted at 6:52 AM on Feb-18-06

The RIAA would like to remind you that copying purchased music to your iPod is illegal without first gaining permission from the copyright holder. Thank you.
comment posted at 2:20 PM on Feb-16-06

"Thank you for the refresher course on contracts. This is not a bar exam question."
'bla bla bla."
comment posted at 2:03 PM on Feb-16-06
comment posted at 4:03 PM on Feb-16-06
comment posted at 4:33 PM on Feb-16-06
comment posted at 4:40 PM on Feb-16-06
comment posted at 4:57 PM on Feb-16-06

We all know the Nazis picked, and ruined, a perfectly good basic geometric symbol. But what about other symbols of fascism? Not as well known, not as demonized, but interting for students of symbolism.

Oldest, and among the most interesting and enduringly popular, is the fasces, a bundle of sticks wrapped around an axe, from which fascism gets its name. It's pretty rare to see swastikas in public nowadays -- they're so associated with the Nazis that they were universally stripped off American sports jerseys, soda pop promoting watch fobs, and first ladies. And yet, in the United States, fasces can still be found everywhere: medals of honor, the doors to the Nebraska Supreme Court, even behind the president as he speaks at the U.S. House of Representatives.
comment posted at 1:40 PM on Feb-16-06

The SEC has proposed new rules [pdf] to drastically increase requirements on executive compensation disclosure. You can read a summary of the proposal in the SEC's press release, as well as statements from Chairman Cox and Commissioner Atkin. [more inside]
comment posted at 1:52 PM on Feb-16-06
comment posted at 2:12 PM on Feb-16-06
comment posted at 2:38 PM on Feb-16-06

Batman kicks al Qaeda's ass Frank Miller is working on a Batman vs. Al Qaeda comic. At least he's being honest that it's utter propaganda.
comment posted at 11:24 AM on Feb-15-06
comment posted at 6:26 PM on Feb-16-06

British soldiers filmed beating Iraqis. A British tabloid has released footage showing British troops beating Iraqi rioters. The video, available in realplayer format or Windows Media format, was apparently taken by a British corporal, and shows at least eight British soldiers dragging four young rioters inside a British army compound, where they were repeatedly beaten with batons, boots and fists, and kicked in the genitals. Arab television and the BBC have since aired the footage.
comment posted at 2:37 AM on Feb-14-06

The inside and underground look at the USAFA. Quite simply this is basically an underground e-zine of sorts focused on the United Stated Air Force Acadamy. A major part of the site is The Hate Machine, a flash cartoon featuring the Fightin' Ostriches. A read through eDodo is a good look into what the USAFA looks like inside the zoo.
comment posted at 12:36 PM on Feb-10-06

USAF Changes Guidelines to Allow Religious Discrimination Apparently, mainstream media considers this close to a non-story : "The Air Force released new guidelines for religious expression, dropping a requirement for chaplains to respect others' rights to their own beliefs and no longer cautioning top officers about promoting their personal religious views." ( AP ) The NYT carried a a one paragraph AP release on this. Forbes carried an extended AP story. Other coverage ? Well, there's the Daily Kos, Metafilter...
comment posted at 10:04 AM on Feb-10-06
comment posted at 10:09 AM on Feb-10-06

Video games pioneer Atari fears plug set to be pulled. Hope is fading at Atari, a company that has existed in many forms over the years, but was founded in the United States in 1972 by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney. Now might be a good time to take a walk through the Atari Museum, ponder the Zen-like instruction: AVOID MISSING BALL FOR HIGH SCORE, see the world's first video game 'Easter Egg' and pay your respects at the E.T. Landfill. But whatever you do, don't lose hope.
comment posted at 10:43 AM on Feb-10-06

The 141 Programs Bush Wants to Cut or Kill.
comment posted at 11:05 PM on Feb-9-06

Comic artist Seth Fisher died unexpectedly; this rotten news led to a session wallowing in his online gallery to see one side of what the world lost. But, with so many comic artists putting galleries online, why wait until someone's gone to appreciate their work? You could admire the energy in Mike Wieringo's figures, or the stylized coolness of Cameron Stewart. You could bask in the freaky genius of Mike Allred, or scratch your head and wonder how Phil Bond's characters feel so real with such weird proportions. You could look to the future with Ryan Sook, or, if you're more into the retro thing, there's always the old standby John Byrne.
comment posted at 7:52 PM on Feb-2-06

THE ORIGINAL GAY REPUBLICANS A homosexual prostitution ring was under investigation by federal and district authorities that included among its clients Key officials of the reagan and Bush (senior) officials. The story received some newspaper coverage but there was a TV News Media blackout on the subject. For this reason, most Americans have never heard of it. Former republican Senator John Decamp was involved in the production a documentary about called "Conspiracy of Silence".
comment posted at 4:33 PM on Jan-18-06

Townes van Zandt. In some theaters now is a new documentary about his life called Be Here to Love Me--a life that followed the all-too-typical path of a star that burns too bright: the promise of talent, addiction, and untimely death. (see the trailer here or here). Townes van Zandt was a singer/songwriter, often included in the folk or country genres, whose biggest accomplishment was when Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard took his song Poncho and Lefty to the top of the charts. But even though he never was famous, he has achieved legendary status. Steve Earle once said "Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that."
comment posted at 4:51 PM on Jan-18-06

Read your MetaFilter at Protopage Version 2 will blow your socks off - and it was already one of the most useful tools on the web. It's an online notebook, a news reader and a bookmarks page that you can share or keep private. They just released a ton of new features including RSS (you can use it to keep up with your MeFi / Ask MeFi feeds - check the feed directory under 'Blogs'). They're also asking for people to write in with their top feature requests. You can probably tell, I'm a big, big fan.
comment posted at 3:56 AM on Dec-5-05

Own an iPod/Nano? These uber-kool mittens rock!!! Cozy and stylish! I want a pair... and I don't even own an iPod! heh! Comes with knitting instructions [PDF]! Su-weeet!
comment posted at 4:37 AM on Nov-23-05
comment posted at 4:47 AM on Nov-23-05

In 2001 America destroyed the Kabul offices of al-Jazeera with two smartbombs; officials said it was an accident. In 2003 America destroyed the Baghdad offices of al-Jazeera with missiles; officials said it was an accident. Now, two British civil servants are on trial for leaking a memo revealing that Bush intended to bomb al-Jazeera... at their headquarters in allied Qatar.
comment posted at 4:20 AM on Nov-23-05

Dr Who - The Second Key. Original Dr Who strips made with photographed dolls and speech balloons.
comment posted at 5:34 AM on Nov-18-05

The top 30 facts about Chuck Norris
comment posted at 3:27 PM on Nov-19-05

[WrestleFilter] Eddie Guerrero, a/k/a Latino Heat, was found dead in his hotel room in Minnesota this morning. He was 38. His is the latest in a years-long string of tragic early deaths in professional wrestling.
comment posted at 12:28 AM on Nov-14-05