"My gut feeling is that it's destroyed," said Bob Bernstein, the owner of Bongo Java coffee shop, where the bun had been on display for nearly 10 years. "Someone took it, destroyed it and it's the last we'll hear of it."

Someone broke into the Belmont Boulevard coffeehouse yesterday morning, apparently with the sole purpose of stealing the pious pastry. Bills and loose change in charity-donation containers near the bun's glass display case were untouched, Bernstein said.

"They went right for the bun," he said. "What the heck they are going to do with it, I can't imagine. It's sure not something anyone would eat. I hope they do eat it. It will teach them a lesson."

"It's weird," Bernstein said. "You laugh about it a little bit, but it's an empty feeling. It's like the end of an era."

This story was on the Today show this morning including an interview with Bob. Was kinda wierd to wake up to.

BongoJava Nun Bun stolen!

Words Without Borders undertakes to promote international communication through translation of the world's best writing—selected and translated by a distinguished group of writers, translators, and publishing professionals

Our ultimate aim is to introduce exciting international writing to the general public—travelers, teachers, students, publishers, and a new generation of eclectic readers—by presenting international literature not as a static, elite phenomenon, but a portal through which to explore the world.

Words Without Borders

ibenez wrote:

What is the problem here? Can someone tell me what the problem is with beating the f@#$king shit out of people?

As long as they don't dismember or kill the prisoners, they are enemy - treat them as such. I'm sorry but the first HEAD they chopped off threw the Geneva conventions right out the fucking window.

There are many problems here, my bloodthirsty friend.

The first of which is that the Geneva conventions don't apply to loosely bound terrorists with no national affiliation. They *do* apply to signatory nations who agreed to abide by certain rules for some minimal civility in the conduct of military actions. They apply to us, or should, because we believe that certain actions are morally reprehensible and that performing them reduces us to the same base level as the butchers we're fighting. It may be that you belive that the end justifies the means, and that anyone's actions justify an equal, or even more severe, reaction, in which case, feel free to continue believing so... just don't make the assumption that the rest of America agrees with you.

Second, you describe torture as "beating the fucking shit out of people", which I think minimizes the reality of the situation. We're not talking about a beating. We're talking about long term physical and mental anguish. These are not the same, and if a person is not cabable of facing the reality of what we mean when we say "torture" then they're in no position to advocate for it. I don't say that's your situation, mind you... I have no trouble believing you both know and favor exactly the kinds of duress implied by torture. This at least makes you not hypocritical.

The most serious problem, though, with this particular case, is the secrecy of it all. McCain has some knowledge of POW camps, and believes that America should not the kind of place that condones or engages in similar activity. Likewise, I imagine, he feels that the American public agree, and regard torture as a repugnant and immoral activity. We can't really know, of course, because most of the public doesn't bother to face up to the issue. They have some vague notion of what torture is and base an opinion on that knowledge. The administration well knows that the american public, who *ought* to be in charge of this country, wouldn't stand for it if they knew the details, so the details are classified and tacked onto the Army field manual so as to comply with the letter of the law, but completely defeat the spirit of it.

My fundamental belief is that we shouldn't be afraid to be honest about our practices. America is the greatest and strongest nation on earth... if the people of this country support torture, then lets say so, and tell our enemies exactly what they can expect if they're so foolish as to fall into our hands. If the people *don't* support it, then we shouldn't do it. But lets not tuck it away and feed everyone more pabulum about "achieving victory". We were founded on the notion that humans are capable of applying Reason to their own self-governance. Transparency is freedom's best friend... without it we are lost.

I think McCain believes that America should be a nation that leads by example and, as such, doesn't engage in the same horrific activities as it's enemies. To do so requires more strenth and more resolve than acting on animal urges. Meeting torture with torture, hate with hate, and rage with rage ought to be below us. Rather than accepting this, the administration gave McCain a patronizing nod and then subverted his efforts without a blink. *That's* why McCain should be pissed.

RE: New Army Rules May Snarl Talks With McCain on Detainee Issue - New York Times

I graduate in a few hours and it still hasn't sunk in.

Pentagon expands domestic surveillance.

And Bruce Schneier weighs in as well.

Oh, this is baaaad, bad, bad, people... wake up... wake up....

Pentagon Expands Domestic Surveillance

A 15-year-old girl in Quebec's Saguenay region is believed to have died as a result of an allergic reaction to her boyfriend's kiss.

Officials said she did not consume the nuts, but they believe she had a reaction to kissing her boyfriend, who had eaten peanut butter.

Kiss may have been fatal for teen with nut allergy

Hoosier Public Radio is largely the enterprise of one man, Martin Hensley, a former radio engineer who now describes his occupation as "serving God." And the effort by Mr. Hensley to take the F.C.C. license from WRFT, or at least force it to share broadcast time with him, offers but one example of a series of similar conflicts involving student radio stations. At least 20 high school stations, and a handful of college ones, have been fending off challenges to their licenses by Christian broadcasters in the last year.

This flurry of action, which seemed so inexplicable to Mr. George, actually has a fierce logic to it. A loophole in commission regulations makes educational stations unusually vulnerable to takeover attempts. Moreover, their frequencies are a lucrative commodity, a bargain-basement way to get onto the air.

MR. HENSLEY, for one, sounds unlikely to go away quietly. He presents himself as the victim of an "emotional hate issue" all because "someone finally stood up and said these stations haven't served the public all these years." He specifically faults the high school stations for playing too much music and doing too little "community-oriented" programming, which he says should include Christian shows. Asked why he simply does not buy a station - one of the commercial Christian stations in the Indianapolis area was up for sale last summer - he points out that it ultimately brought $3 million.

School Radio Stations Face Competition Over Licenses

For decades, tourists have paid thousands of dollars for the chance to surf, snorkel and splash in the crystalline waters here. Now they're paying $5.50 a bottle to drink it.

In perhaps the most bizarre consequence of a failed municipal electricity experiment, a small Japanese company, the Koyo USA Corporation, has begun bottling desalinated water pumped from 2,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean and marketing it to Japanese consumers as the purest, most nutritious beverage on earth.

Those companies claim deeper seawater contains more nutrients and fewer pollutants than surface water. Kona's water, according to Koyo's chief operating officer, Kozo Kayama, is better because its source is deeper and older.

"The water you're drinking is older than Jesus," Mr. Kayama said of Koyo's Mahalo water.

Hawaii Finds New Exportable Resource: Ocean Water

"I don't know if I can be counted as a successful Web cam dance girl," that early post continued. "But I'm sure that looking around the world, if I am not the one with the highest diploma, I am definitely the dance babe who reads the most and thinks the deepest, and I'm most likely the only party member among them."

Chinese Web logs have existed since early in this decade, but the form has exploded in recent months, challenging China's ever vigilant online censors and giving flesh to the kind of free-spoken civil society whose emergence the government has long been determined to prevent or at least tightly control.

Under China's current leader, Hu Jintao, the government has waged an energetic campaign against freedom of expression, prohibiting the promotion of public intellectuals by the news media; imposing restrictions on Web sites; pressing search engine companies, like Google, to bar delicate topics, particularly those dealing with democracy and human rights; and heavily censoring bulletin board discussions at universities and elsewhere.

"The new bloggers are talking back to authority, but in a humorous way," said Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California, Berkeley. "People have often said you can say anything you want in China around the dinner table, but not in public. Now the blogs have become the dinner table, and that is new.

A Party Girl Leads China's Online Revolution

The Bush administration brought terrorism charges on Tuesday against Jose Padilla in a criminal court after holding him for three and a half years in a military brig as an enemy combatant once accused in a "dirty bomb" plot.

The decision to remove Mr. Padilla from military custody and charge him in the civilian system averts what had threatened to be a constitutional showdown over the president's authority to detain him and other American citizens as enemy combatants without formal charges.

"President Bush has directed his administration to utilize all available tools to protect America from acts of terrorism," Mr. Gonzales said. "This case, which began as an intelligence investigation, is a classic example of why the criminal justice system is one of those important tools."

"The Justice Department cannot continue changing course each time action from the courts is imminent," said Representative Adam B. Schiff, a California Democrat who serves on the Judiciary Committee. "If Congress refuses to act, our judicial policies will continue to be cobbled together in a piecemeal fashion."

In Legal Shift, U.S. Charges Detainee in Terrorism Case