Intelligence vice chairman calls war unjustified
This is huge - even moreso than Pat Buchanan's latest departure from the party huddle. How this nugget slipped off the radar of our 'liberal media' is a news story unto itself.

A top Republican lawmaker has broken from his party in the final days of his House career, saying he believes that the U.S. military assault on Iraq was unjustified and that the situation there has deteriorated into “a dangerous, costly mess.”
...
“From the beginning of the conflict, it was doubtful that we for long would be seen as liberators, but instead increasingly as an occupying force,” he said. “Now we are immersed in a dangerous, costly mess, and there is no easy and quick way to end our responsibilities in Iraq without creating bigger future problems in the region and, in general, in the Muslim world.”
Bereuter said that as a result of the war, “our country’s reputation around the world has never been lower and our alliances are weakened.”

[Still no metallic silver jumpsuit/uniforms] Yet another "futurist" chimes in on what life will be like in 2014.

[what do we want!? LUNCH! When do we want it!? 30 Minutes or less or our next visit to Applebees is half-price!]
Peaceful RNC protesters to get a coupon for Applebees in NYC? And you get a button?! I can't figure this out. What protester would eat that crap, not to mention that you get your name on some right-wing Gestapo's mall-food eating, easily-cowed, may-be-a-liberal list. Who thought this up? Why? "Democracy, civil liberties, and global stability are under assault from a corrupt, cronyist, illegitimate administration... let's go get some Mug-A-Ritas and Atkins-approved Chick'n FunFingers!". Somebody please tell me who is signing up for this trainwreck of a PR campaign!

"It's no fun to protest on an empty stomach," Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said yesterday, when he announced the program at NYC & Company, the city's tourism office, which will distribute the buttons to all comers to its Midtown office.

[All hail White Cranberry Peach Juice] McSweeney's reviews new foods

Think you've got a hot little datacenter with your transparent case and neon liquid cooling system? You're nothing without a retroencabulator. (WMV ~3mb, more technobabble than a break-in scene in an 80's hacker movie)

PriceWaterhouseCoopers developed a predictive model for who's going to take what in the Olympics

Ed Charon, 69 - World champion phone-book ripper
Charon, who wears a size 16 ring, went through the first book like it was only a few pages rather than 1,004. He tossed the two pieces into a box at his feet and grabbed the next book off of a table.

A site for people who have learned nothing from the 3 little pigs, and build straw-bale houses to live in. (another, 2, 3)

The Origins of American Animation (1900-1921), including some Krazy Kat stuff, all viewable online (from the American Memory Collection)

Homeland Security declares war on .... science fiction novel cover art.

Wilco's fantastic performance of Hummingbird on Letterman last night (rerun from 6/14) (AVI 12 MB) found on borkencode.com

[Honey, did you see that 1.8 Billion dollar wad I left lying around here anywhere?]
Twitchy warmonger Dick Cheney's favorite bad-boy corporation can't account for almost $US2B of their sweetheart deal money.

Holy crap. this is the best Soul Caliber II dance coreography I've ever witnessed: Dance, Voldo, Dance.

If you have any doubt that the government will use mental health reporting to categorize and discriminate against citizens - even children, consider this PA case where what a man told his doctor in private was reported to the government and led to his driver's license being revoked.

Whenever Bush croaks the word "Freedom", you can be sure your rights are about to get trounced like Ashcroft in a popular election against a corpse. In his latest round of radical Republican hijinx, his administration has cooked up the "President's Freedom Commission on Mental Health" which ostensibly proposes that all American "consumers" be screened and scored for mental illness. Look for child consumers to be screened in schools. What this has to do with freedom isn't clear, other than the typical partisan linguistic hijacking that the administration has applied to the word since 9/11.

What's Bush policy without a little industry cronyism thrown in? Read InterventionMag's assessment of the program.
"The New Freedom Initiative proposes to screen every American, including you, for mental illness. To this end, the president established a New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, to study the nation’s mental health delivery service and make a report. It’s interesting to note that many on the staff appointed to the Commission have served on the advisory boards of some of the nation’s largest drug companies."

You are entering a world of Lebowski (NYTimes)

The ACLU released a report today entitled the Surveillance Industrial Complex that outlines the ways that the federal government is using private companies to wage war on individual privacy and civil liberties.

"Never, in my view, had America been led by such a dangerous head of state."
-- Senator Robert Byrd (D, WV), in his book "Losing America" Reviewed in the NYTimes, and on commondreams.org.

Mr. Byrd adds: "This doctrine of pre-emption claimed by Bush should have incited a major debate in the Congress and across the country. Radical, having no basis in existing law, this new foreign policy was dangerous in the extreme. ... This green and arrogant president had made a U-turn on our tradition of working with allies and exhausting diplomatic efforts. ... Our metamorphosis on the world stage from powerful, peaceful giant to swaggering Wild West bully, with little regard for cooperative agreements, sensitivities or diplomacy in general, means a different kind of world in years to come."

A nice java-based Spirograph simulator

Get injured in style (1880's style): Hiwheel is making new boneshaker bicyles (the ones where you sit 5 ft. high astride an enormous front wheel).

Build a leaf-blower hovercraft that can supposedly lift 10 adults.

Build a thermal ball-bearing motor

Bruce Springsteen on why he's getting political in this election (NYTimes)

I supported the decision to enter Afghanistan and I hoped that the seriousness of the times would bring forth strength, humility and wisdom in our leaders. Instead, we dived headlong into an unnecessary war in Iraq, offering up the lives of our young men and women under circumstances that are now discredited. We ran record deficits, while simultaneously cutting and squeezing services like afterschool programs. We granted tax cuts to the richest 1 percent (corporate bigwigs, well-to-do guitar players), increasing the division of wealth that threatens to destroy our social contract with one another and render mute the promise of "one nation indivisible."

The Jive is back after a short break. Hi.

Some Democrats who signed up to hear Vice President DickCheney speak Saturday were refused tickets unless they signed a pledge to endorse President Bush.

The measure was a security step designed to avoid a disruption, which Bush campaign spokesman Dan Foley alleged Democrats were planning. Democratic Party officials denied it.

Privacy International's 6th annual Big Brother Awards.  Mostly British villiany.

French Spiderman spotted again.

World's most expensive coffee is catshit.

a) "America's economy is strong and is getting stronger"  -- G.W. Bush
b) "Americans' Income Shrank for 2 Consecutive Years" -- The I.R.S.

One of them is lying.

Voices from the Dustbowl:  The Charles Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection is an online presentation of a multi-format ethnographic field collection documenting the everyday life of residents of Farm Security Administration (FSA) migrant work camps in central California in 1940 and 1941. This collection consists of audio recordings, photographs, manuscript materials, publications, and ephemera generated during two separate documentation trips supported by the Archive of American Folk Song.
Direct links to songs (mp3 format), photographs.

Alphabetical index of lighthouses (all photographed)

A nice little web color scheme generator I've never come across before.

Yes, the voting machines are that unreliable.  Florida '02 election results "lost".

James Bond Gadget index

Project Button

"It's the biggest threat to technology in 20 years"
The Senate will consider a bill that would make it illegal to write software that *could* be used to violate copyrights.  This proposed massacre of free speech and innovation is so one-sidedly in the interests of already-too-powerful media goliaths that its impossible to see any benefit for citizens. 

The first atomic clock wristwatch

The Greatest Drum Solos! (with audio!)

"Unless we have a climate that will allow more independent media companies to survive, a dangerously high percentage of what we see--and what we don't see--will be shaped by the profit motives and political interests of large, publicly traded conglomerates. The economy will suffer, and so will the quality of our public life. Let me be clear: As a business proposition, consolidation makes sense. The moguls behind the mergers are acting in their corporate interests and playing by the rules. We just shouldn't have those rules. They make sense for a corporation. But for a society, it's like over-fishing the oceans. When the independent businesses are gone, where will the new ideas come from? We have to do more than keep media giants from growing larger; they're already too big. We need a new set of rules that will break these huge companies to pieces. "
-- Ted Turner on the need to bust up big media (Washington Monthly)

A page with every Olympic world record.  Eastern Europeans are still crushing at any event where something gets thrown.

A short camera-video of Chris, Connie, and I at the Living Room from Wednesday night (avi, 3m)

The 9/11 Commission report has been made available.  The executive summary is here.
The Full Report is here (pdf).

A new white paper, from the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, detailsfourteen government data surveillance programs, including last year'scontroversial Total/Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) project,which persists despite Congress' vote to kill it.

The concertsforkerry show at the Living Room in NYC was packed to capacity last night!  Thanks everyone for coming out for a good cause with great music.  I loved every minute of it, and a friendlier bunch of people I've never met.  They've got more good shows with 100% of the proceeds going to the campaign, so get there if you havn't already.

Alaska: Cold, no chicks, and you get poked in the eye with a sharp stick.  Just kidding about the poke-in-the eye, but its bad enough, no? (NYTimes)

A Japanese invention that turns plant's petals and leaves into sound-generating speakers.

Strange but true.

 Whales don't compete with fisheries.
"You cannot use the argument that whales compete with fisheries and therefore must be reduced in numbers," says Kaschner. "It's deeply flawed. They simply don't eat the same food in the same areas."Japan has long made the argument that whale populations must be kept in check so that they do not turn into oceanic pests, depleting the fish on which humans rely.

Poster: History of Programming Languages (PDF, OReilly)

Fantastic sea life and underwater photography at seaotter.com

The Diddly Awards: Honoring the jaw-dropping achievements of the 108th Congress. (mother jones)
Yet even as they have scoffed at the rules the rest of us plebs must live by and spent like drunken sailors, the most profligate Congress in nearly a century still found myriad opportunities to, once again, do diddly.

The New Yorker on what Kerry's foreign policy landscape will look like.

If anyone is out there from the NYC area, stop by and say hi when I'll be at the Living Room on Wednesday, July 21.
I'll be playing drums in Connie Petruk's new, yet-to-be-named band. See us in our still-creaky glory. We go on at 9pm, before Craig Wedren of Baby and Matthew Caws of Nada Surf, so it promises to be a fun night. The show is part of the Concerts for Kerry fundraising series, so your modest admission cash will be going to a good cause.
The Living Room is in the Lower East Side - 154 Ludlow Street between Stanton and Rivington Streets.

The need for software to last 200 years.

Digital Imaging to examine mummies without cutting them open
In the past, Egyptologists and archaeologists cut up mummies to thoroughly examine them. Opening up a mummy ultimately meant damaging it, which limited the amount of information they could collect.
Mistri recalled how scientists used invasive techniques to examine the world's most famous mummy, King Tutankhamen.
"They hacksawed his head off," he said.

1194 Miles per gallon

Anybody know where to get a copy of this? (from memepool)

Flea Markets are great. $36 gets you this:
A vacationer who purchased a suitcase at an Australian flea market found a trove of Beatles memorabilia inside, including photos, concert programs and unreleased recordings, The Times newspaper reported Tuesday.

While the materials have yet to be authenticated, some experts believe the collection is the lost "Mal Evans archive," originally belonging to the Beatles' roadie and recording engineer.

Found this on a radiology newsletter this AM.





Mejia was working on the roof of an unfinished home on April 19 when he fell down onto a co-worker who was using a high-powered nail driver. The men grabbed at each other to keep from falling further; meanwhile the loose nail gun kept discharging.
The guy made it.

Mr. Danzig, meet Mr. Floor.

"Raw Horse Flesh": Japanese Ice Cream, of course
(courtesy of Kid of Tokyo)

Long NYTimes magazine article on the place of graphic novels in contemporary literature.

Republican-controlled media hive Clear-Channel bans Times Square billboard critical of Bush's Iraqi invasion.
...
Part of what may be fueling speculation about the company's motives is the close relationship that its executives have with the Republican Party and the Bush administration. In the 2000 and 2002 election cycles, for instance, the company and its officials donated slightly more than $300,000 in unregulated money, almost all of it to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, an organization in Washington that monitors political contributions.
In addition, Tom Hicks, the Texas Rangers' owner who has longtime ties to President Bush, is a top executive at Clear Channel.

While the government bows to puritanical broadcasting standards, PBS suffers.
Unlike other broadcast networks, however, PBS doesn't have a lot of cash sitting around. In fact, the considerable woes now facing PBS are almost directly tied to money -- the system simply can't afford to stand up against the government.

Nice collection of vintage watch ads from timezone.com.

Inflatable space hotels (via slashdot)

More B.S. and unchecked greed from the MPAA: One in four people have illegally downloaded a film over the net.

The Hollywood studios say piracy is costing them billions, even though box office takings rose by 5% last year.

Health vs. Wealth (NYTimes)

The Liberal Media compares the candidates (This Modern World at workingforchange)

Tastes Great. Mice Filling.
Say... Wasn't this a ploy in "Strange Brew"

Pharma CEO to R&D: "Get me something that stops coughing better than what the competition has water, and get it to me by Monday.
Children in all three groups showed a dramatic reduction in cough frequency, but those taking the placebo -- essentially flavored water -- had the best results.

Playlists on Dick Cheney's iPod. (McSweeneys)

Twists, Slugs and Roscoes: A Glossary of Hardboiled Slang

Lost in Translation
Sibel Edmonds, a translator who worked at the FBI's language division, says the documents weren't translated because the divison was riddled with incompetence and corruption.

[Criminalizing progress and technology]
Senator Orin Hatch (Utah, and Republican, of course) wants to make it illegal to write P2P software. If this passes, it'll be another defeat of individual rights in favor of corrupt corporate interests.
The bill "will chill the development, if enacted, of not only peer-to-peer technology, but wonderful new information tools yet to be devised," P2P United executive director Adam Eisgrau said in an e-mail. "Don't buy the hype. Any member of Congress who supports this bill is voting, without so much as a hearing, to undo more than a century of solid copyright case law that has protected innovators and technology from the terrible power of entrenched industries and, in the process, created the American economy."

Separated at birth?

Blogger just isn't working well anymore. Can anyone recommend a better alternative?

You've Got Mail (and Court Says Others Can Read It)

Last week a federal appeals court in Boston ruled that federal wiretap laws do not apply to e-mail messages if they are stored, even for a millisecond, on the computers of the Internet providers that process them - meaning that it can be legal for the government or others to read such messages without a court order.

Today pitchforkmedia selects our new national anthem.

Birmingham (uk) slang

President Bush, seeking to mobilize religious conservatives for his reelection campaign, has asked church-going volunteers to turn over church membership directories, campaign officials said on Thursday.

["uhhh... my dog ate it", BushCo style] The Bush administration is offering a novel reason for denying a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the Justice Department's database on foreign lobbyists: Copying the information would bring down the computer system.

"This was a new one on us. We weren't aware there were databases that could be destroyed just by copying them," Bob Williams of the Center for Public Integrity said yesterday. The watchdog group in Washington, D.C., made the request in January.

The Letters of Gary Benchley, Rock Star. Getting the Band Together [Part 1] [Part 2]

I should not be able to say the following things about America (Onion)

New Japanese toy helps you control what you dream.

How did I miss this site? Forthright's Phrontisery has great lists of lost and unusual words, as well as specialty lists for such things as fabrics and cloth and an index to lippograms in fiction (where the writer intentionally omits letters, such as 'e' from entire works)

[Imbeciles 101] In an irony-of-all-ironies strategy, George Bush employs images of his ideological soulmate, Adolf Hitler, in a bizarre attack on Kerry (?!) (NYTimes)
President Bush's campaign Web site is featuring an advertisement casting Senator John Kerry and his allies as a "coalition of the wild-eyed," blending clips of former Vice President Al Gore, former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont and the filmmaker Michael Moore shouting about Mr. Bush. Interspersed twice are images of a shouting Hitler, drawn from a Web spot that MoveOn.org, the Internet advocacy group that runs anti-Bush advertisements, briefly posted months ago in a contest for advertisements about the president.
...
The advertisement ends with upbeat music and the written message "This is not a time for pessimism and rage."

Torture, Financial turmoil, greed, cronyism, environmental collapse, and radical dementia perhaps, but not pessimism.

The Mayday Mystery
Every year since 1981 a strange ad has appeared in an Arizona student newspaper, perhaps pointing to a treasure for anyone who can figure it out.

The Sneaky Pitch (NewYorker)
During the so-called Dead Ball Era, prior to 1920, the name of the game was deception. Pitchers routinely did whatever they could to get an edge. They’d spit tobacco juice on the ball, rub it in mud, scuff the seams, anything they could think of. Then, in 1920, the spitball was banned, Babe Ruth went to the Yankees, home runs became much more prevalent, and the whole nature of baseball became more about great displays of power, on the part of the pitcher and the batter both. This is a vast oversimplification, and, in fact, the knuckleball probably was at its popular peak in the two decades or so after the spitball was banned, when pitchers needed to find ways of compensating.

Strangest state tax laws
If you want a deck of cards in the state of Alabama, be prepared to shell out an extra dime. The state government has levied a 10-cent tax on the purchase of a playing deck that contains "no more than 54 cards". If you object to this, get your playing cards in a different state, or buy a deck with an extra joker.

Otherpower.com: The Blunt Edge of High Technology
For people interested in building their own windmills, waterwheels, converting flashlights to LED, or running a hamster-powered alternator
These guys test their stuff so you don't have to.

Questions for Ronald P. Reagan (NYTimes)
If you are going to call yourself a Christian -- and I don't -- then you have to ask yourself a fundamental question, and that is: Whom would Jesus torture? Whom would Jesus drag around on a dog's leash? How can Christians tolerate it? It is unconscionable.

Hatebeak: A Deathmetal band with a parrot on vocals.

John Kerry released his plan on technology, research, and education today

100 best albums of the 70's on pitchforkmedia today.

What's the future internet going to look like? DNS inventor Paul Mockapetris predicts (BBC)
Although he says we're currently in the Bronze age, he plays it dull-n-safe and makes no striking claims here (no phones? big deal).

Politics are getting to be a drag... Back to my favorite kind of story: Gorilla on the loose!

(BTW: Any ape-related breaking news should be forwarded to my email account post haste)

The Unhappy Majority (Mojones)
Voters remain deadlocked in a partisan divide over which candidate to support, but this split is not indicative of the bipartisan discontent felt by most Americans, a new national poll by Mother Jones reveals*. Nearly two thirds of American voters say the country is "on the wrong track" and most -- including a majority of independents and even many moderate Republicans -- believe that they are personally worse off than three years ago on a broad range of issues, from their tax burden and job opportunities to their access to quality health care and schools. This "discontent gap" between party loyalty and the issues indicates a strategic opening for a candidate who promises real change.

[McSweeneys] To celebrate the release of Nick Hornby's Songbook, several authors wrote in about their favorite songs. We will continue to update this section as often as we receive new essays. We invite you to write in about your favorite songs as well.

Are you a perfectionist? Take the Necker Cube test (BBC)