] Researchers at Holloman AFB have broken their own two
] decades old land speed record for rail vehicles. The
] rocket powered sled covered the 3 mile track in roughly 6
] seconds. Preliminary numbers put the sled's speed at mach
] 8.6 or about 6,400 mph - it covered the last 1.8 miles in
] just 1.3 seconds. The previous record of 6,122 mph was
] set on Oct. 5, 1982. Other accounts are at the Alamogordo
] Daily News, the Denver Post, and CNN

where can I get one???

Land Speed Record Broken: 0-6,400 in Six Seconds

] BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 30 %u2014 Even though many
] irreplaceable antiquities were looted from the National
] Museum of Iraq during the chaotic fall of Baghdad last
] month, museum officials and American investigators now
] say the losses seem to be less severe than originally
] thought.
]
] Col. Matthew F. Bogdanos, a Marine reservist who is
] investigating the looting and is stationed at the museum,
] said museum officials had given him a list of 29
] artifacts that were definitely missing. But since then, 4
] items %u2014 ivory objects from the eighth century B.C.
] %u2014 had been traced.

Loss Estimates Are Cut on Iraqi Artifacts, but Questions Remain

Even as White House political aides plot a 2004 campaign plan designed to capitalize on the emotions and issues raised by the September 11 terror attacks, administration officials are waging a behind-the-scenes battle to restrict public disclosure of key events relating to the attacks.

...

By refusing to declassify many of its most significant conclusions, the administration has essentially thwarted congressional plans to release the report by the end of this month, congressional and administration sources tell NEWSWEEK. In some cases, these sources say, the administration has even sought to “reclassify” some material that was already discussed in public testimony—a move one Senate staffer described as “ludicrous.” The administration’s stand has infuriated the two members of Congress who oversaw the report—Democratic Sen. Bob Graham and Republican Rep. Porter Goss.

...

In Graham’s view, the Bush administration isn’t protecting legitimate issues of national security but information that could be a political “embarrassment,” the aide said. Graham, who last year served as Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, recently told NEWSWEEK: “There has been a cover-up of this."

...

... because the document relied so heavily on secret material, the administration “working group,” overseen by CIA director George Tenet, had to first “scrub” the document and determine which portions could be declassified.

More than two months later, the working group came back with its decisions—and some members were flabbergasted. Entire portions remained classified. Some of the report—including some dealing with matters that had been extensively aired in public, such as the now famous FBI “Phoenix memo” of July 2001 reporting that Middle Eastern nationals might be enrolling in U.S. flight schools—were “reclassified.”

...

One portion deals extensively with the stream of U.S. intelligence-agency reports in the summer of 2001 suggesting that Al Qaeda was planning an upcoming attack against the United States—and implicitly raises questions about how Bush and his top aides responded. One such CIA briefing, in July 2001, was particularly chilling and prophetic. It predicted that Osama bin Laden was about to launch a terrorist strike “in the coming weeks,” the congressional investigators found. The intelligence briefing went on to say: “The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.”

The substance of that intelligence report was first disclosed at a public hearing last September by staff director Hill. But at the last minute, Hill was blocked from saying precisely who within the Bush White House got the briefing when CIA director Tenet classified the names of the recipients. (One source says the recipients of the briefing included Bush himself.) As a result, Hill was only able to say the briefing was given to “senior government officials.”

...

Hopefully the truth will find its way into the light about 9/11 someday. Bush's administration is doing everything in their power to keep the lid on the truth. It wouldn't help his re-election bid if the public knew he sat on his ass and let it happen.

If you live in America, if you call this your home, wouldn't you like to know everything possible about 9/11? I still want to know why the Air Force was told to stand down that day. I still want to know more about those fishy stock put options and how they were traced back to A.B. Brown. What is the classified information linking the Israeli spy ring in America to 9/11?

Lots of unanswered questions. Keep the issues alive.

The Secrets of September 11

] Pastor Deacon Fred went on to note that although the
] violence in The Two Towers film is some of the best he's
] ever seen outside of the Holy Bible, that the hidden
] sexual agenda in the movie makes it unwatchable to anyone
] other than a qualified minister of God.

Movie Review | Two Towers is Homo Slang For Erect Hobbit Penises!

] NHL playoff hockey. Sudden-death overtime. Sometimes,
] slow-death overtime, like when the Ducks beat the Stars
] in the fourth-longest game in NHL history last week.
] Nothing like it. Lots of great playoff games have gone
] long. So we give you the best of the overtime
] drama from the NHL playoffs.

My personal fave is when Yzerman scored on St. Louis in game 7's OT a few years back. I gave myself a concussion from hitting my head on the ceiling I lept so high.

Playoff hockey. Nothing like it on the planet.

] A seven-year-old boy who was admitted to hospital with
] stomach pains was actually "pregnant" with his twin
] brother.
]
] Doctors at Chimkent Children's Hospital in Kazakhstan
] originally believed Mourat Zhanaidarov was suffering from
] a cyst.
]
] But during surgery, they discovered he was in fact
] carrying the dead foetus of his twin brother.
]
] The foetus had developed into a tumour but was found to
] have hair, nails and bones.

Freaky.

BBC NEWS | Health | Boy 'pregnant' with twin brother

] The US spends almost $50 billion each year on education,
] so why aren't kids learning? Forty percent of students
] lack basic reading skills, and their academic performance
] is dismal compared with that of their foreign
] counterparts. In response to this crisis, schools are
] skilling-and-drilling their way "back to basics," moving
] toward mechanical instruction methods that rely on
] line-by-line scripting for teachers and endless
] multiple-choice testing. Consequently, kids aren't
] learning how to think anymore - they're learning how to
] memorize. This might be an ideal recipe for the future
] Babbitts of the world, but it won't produce the kind of
] agile, analytical minds that will lead the high tech
] global age. Fortunately, we've got Grand Theft Auto: Vice
] City and Deus X for that.
]
] After school, kids are devouring new information,
] concepts, and skills every day, and, like it or not,
] they're doing it controller in hand, plastered to the TV.
] The fact is, when kids play videogames they can
] experience a much more powerful form of learning than
] when they're in the classroom. Learning isn't about
] memorizing isolated facts. It's about connecting and
] manipulating them. Doubt it? Just ask anyone who's beaten
] Legend of Zelda or solved Morrowind.

High Score Education

This is a great collection of spoofed pictures and quotes from "Baghdad Bob." My favorites are the Matrix movie poster, and the picture of Sahaf having been hired by Toronto as their "No SARS" spokesman: "Toronto has no SARS virus, none at all, we did have one or two mild cases of hay fever, but they have been completely overcome..." Heh.

New Careers for the Iraqi (Mis)Information Minister

] A federal judge in Los Angeles has handed a stunning
] court victory to file-swapping services Streamcast
] Networks and Grokster, dismissing much of the record
] industry and movie studios' lawsuit against the two
] companies.

] "Defendants distribute and support software, the
] users of which can and do choose to employ it for
] both lawful and unlawful ends," Wilson wrote in his
] opinion, released Friday. "Grokster and StreamCast
] are not significantly different from companies that
] sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of
] which can be and are used to infringe copyrights."

Wow! Good news!

Judge: File-swapping tools are legal | CNET News.com

] CCS International, a surveillance products company in New
] Rochelle, NY, estimates that ordinary Americans are
] buying surveillance devices, many of dubious legality, at
] a clip of $6 million a day. We have met the enemy of our
] privacy, and it is us.

a great article that talks about how loss of privacy is not inevitable.

Surveillance Nation Part Two