Posts from — May 2006

Via the Invisible Librarian we “discover” Dracorex hogwartsia: the Dragon King of Hogwarts, while DARPA hopes to create Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak without having to breed a Demiguise.

I’m still waiting for my flying car.

Waiting for a Table

The service is really slow, we should come later.

[Editor: From the top: Gray-Nose, Mrs. D, Lone Ranger, Tonto, Mittens, with Katy exiting the frame at the bottom.

Friday Ark

You supported giving them all of these “extraordinary powers” so they could enable the “extraordinary committee” to “protect the people” and now you have discovered that you are not safe from the “committee’s” intrusion:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
There was no one left to speak out.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

The Pastor was an early supporter of the Nazi Party because “something had to be done about the unrest.”

Do you idiots in Congress not understand that your telephones are being logged. Your e-mail is being read. You are subjected to all of the restrictions when flying. You are subjected to the same indignities as the rest of us.

Did you think you would be immune? Did you think they would treat you differently?

You have the power and the responsibility to stop this. You are supposed to represent the citizens of this country.

This is wrong, but predictable: ‘Da Vinci Code’ success sparks ‘Angels & Demons’ plans.

Dan Brown wrote a boring book named Angels & Demons that no one read before he wrote the slightly less bad book that everyone read. Since the film from the less bad book is making money, they decided to “follow the formula”.

Canadian Broadcasting has a story about the media relations of their new Prime Minister: Harper says he’s finished with Ottawa press corps

Since becoming prime minister in January, Harper has had a testy relationship with the national media in Ottawa. His staff has tried to manage news conferences by saying they will decide which reporters get to ask questions.

The press gallery has refused to play by those rules. “We can’t accept that the Prime Minister’s Office would decide who gets to ask questions,” Yves Malo, a TVA reporter and president of the press gallery, told CP on Tuesday. “Does that mean that when there’s a crisis they’ll only call upon journalists they expect softball questions from?”

On Tuesday about two dozen Ottawa reporters walked out on a Harper event when he refused to take their questions.

That led Harper to say that from now on he will speak only to local media.

Ah, yes: “avoiding the filter to speak directly to the people” was how the Shrubbery put it.

This CBS story, Olmert: Israel Won’t Wait Forever, is just an attempt to shift responsibility:

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday that Israel would be a “willing partner in peace” with the Palestinians, but would draw its own borders in the West Bank should it conclude it has no negotiating partner.

“We cannot wait for the Palestinians forever,” Olmert told members of the House of Representatives and Senate gathered in the House chamber.

“Our deepest wish is to build a better future for our region, hand in hand with a Palestinian partner, but if not, we will move forward, but not alone,” he said, alluding to promised U.S. support.

When you refuse to talk to the other side, you are the problem. There are existing UN Security Council resolutions that clearly delineate the borders, so Israel has the burden to get the Palestinians to agree to any changes. Blaming the Palestinians for who they elect isn’t going to cut it.

Both Australia Broadcasting with their article, Chocolate may boost brain power, and CNN with this Reuters report, tell people to take that Cadbury Fruit & Nut bar and eat it before the test.

Note to the purists: milk chocolate. I’m sorry, but milk chocolate works best.

Towel Day

Oh, the rumor about a Vogon constructor ship disguising itself as a comet is probably not true. If it is true you won’t be reading this, so I’m covered.

Mustang Bobby notes Star Wars was releases on this day in 1977.

Happy Furry Puppy Story Time with Norbizness celebrates his third blogiversary™ ^{[Talk Left]}.

Apparently the National Post has decided to acknowledge the obvious and admit they didn’t use due diligence: Newspaper apologizes for anti-Iran report.

The National Post ran the piece on its front page Friday along with a large photo from 1944 that showed a Hungarian couple wearing the yellow stars that the Nazis forced Jews to sew to their clothing.

The story, which included tough anti-Iran comments, was picked up widely by Web sites and by other media.

“Is Iran turning into the new Nazi Germany? Share your opinion online,” the paper asked readers Friday.

But the National Post, a longtime supporter of Israel and critic of Tehran, admitted Wednesday it had not checked the piece thoroughly enough before running it.

“It is now clear the story is not true,” Douglas Kelly, the National Post’s editor in chief, wrote in a long editorial on Page 2. “We apologize for the mistake and for the consternation it has caused not just National Post readers, but the broader public who read the story.”

Another planted story to confuse the situation and drum up anger against Iran.

[Read more →]

The Chelsea Flower Show is taking place, which is a great spring trip to Britain if you ever have the opportunity.

Has anyone heard why James Wolcott is down? The site was up on Monday, but has been blank yesterday and today. Has he had an attack of Corrente, disappearing into the ether to reappear later?

I forgot: U.S. study sees no marijuana link to lung cancer.

I beginning to believe that the Feds have just lost another slam-dunk case, the Representative William Jefferson [D-LA] bribery case.

Steve Bates has a few posts on the case, and mentioned my thinking in his latest post, concerning the search of Jefferson’s Congressional office.

All Things Considered covered the Republican reaction to the office search including a heated Tom DeLay reaction to what the FBI did. I think this may be an indication of the level of fear among Republicans that they may not be able to hide evidence in their offices anymore. [Update: Mustang Bobby found out why Denny Hastert is upset.]

Following that, ATC did an analysis piece comparing Jefferson’s situation to the Abscam probe of the 1980s. This FBI sting cleaned a number of crooks out of Congress using the same techniques that are in use here.

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Those evil liberals at All Things Considered decided to ask experts about Data-Mining a Mountain of Phone Calls .

Since this is an open source, I’m free to talk about some things I’ve avoided getting into before.

Problem one: the current “watch list” is almost a half million names and some of those names [Edward Kennedy, David Nelson] are not exactly unique. The lack of standardized transliteration between Arabic and English means one name could be on the list multiple times because of spelling variations. The same individual may have more than one name in the Middle East, e.g. Mahmoud Abbas is also known as Abu Masen. This means there is no way of knowing how many people the list represents.

[Read more →]

The Postal Service spokesman in the “Global Con” piece mentioned “turning the corner” on fraud.

That reminded me of Kevin Hayden’s summary at American Street of all the corners we’ve turned in Iraq.

If we’re “staying the course”, why are we making all of these turns? Doesn’t that just take us back to where we started?

Not only do I not believe we are seeing the “light at the end of the tunnel”, I do not believe they know where the tunnel is. Too bad they won’t stop and ask for directions.

CBS reports: 565 Arrested In Mass-Marketing Fraud; and some of them were in the United States. Yes, sir, Abu Gonzo and the boys are cleaning up the Internets.

Those nasty liberals on NPR spread the news about Operation Global Con , but then they spoiled it by asking an expert on Internet scams about the effectiveness of the effort. Come on, you are not supposed to look at the guy behind the curtain.

As much as I appreciate that some of the ‘Net vermin have been taken off line, they aren’t even close to controlling anything. I just received 50 spam comments about ID theft, and another 50 on credit consolidation since 3PM. I’m refining my filters daily to stop this garbage.

I notify a half dozen companies a day about the “phishing” e-mails I receive. Not that it will do me any good, but folks, I don’t have a PayPal or eBay account and I don’t bank on-line, okay? You are wasting time and bandwidth sending me e-mails about the threats to accounts I don’t have.