Absolutely worth looking at - pretty funny. But it looks like the real story is that it's in a Sofitel hotel.

Men's Room Mural

Netflix, the popular online movie rental service, is planning to award $1 million to the first person who can improve the accuracy of movie recommendations based on personal preferences.

James Bennett, left, a Netflix vice president, with the company’s chief executive, Reed Hastings, in a headquarters screening room.

To win the prize, which is to be announced today, a contestant will have to devise a system that is more accurate than the company’s current recommendation system by at least 10 percent. And to improve the quality of research, Netflix is making available to the public 100 million of its customers’ movie ratings, a database the company says is the largest of its kind ever released.

“If we knew how to do it, we’d have already done it,” said Reed Hastings, chief executive of Netflix, based in Los Gatos, Calif.

If no one wins within a year, Netflix will award $50,000 to whoever makes the most progress above a 1 percent improvement, and will award the same amount each year until someone wins the grand prize.

And if You Liked the Movie, a Netflix Contest May Reward You Handsomely

Decius wrote:

BURIED IN THE complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

Oh Fuck...

I'll be one to say "I told you so." A number of people (like me) have been talking, and yelling, and screaming that we are looking at the worst bunch of assholes ever to sit in power in Washington. And people keep saying, "you don't understand 9/11" or "you're a Chicken Little."

No, it's because this was the first bunch of scumbags who would try to do something like this. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the United States of America, rogue superpower. "May you live in interesting times" is an ancient curse. they just got incalcuably more interesting.

RE: Hard To Do Any Worse

“New jihadist networks and cells, sometimes united by little more than their anti-Western agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge,” said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, during a speech in San Antonio in April, the month that the new estimate was completed. “If this trend continues, threats to the U.S. at home and abroad will become more diverse and that could lead to increasing attacks worldwide,” said the general, who was then Mr. Negroponte’s top deputy and is now director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

For more than two years, there has been tension between the Bush administration and American spy agencies over the violence in Iraq and the prospects for a stable democracy in the country. Some intelligence officials have said the White House has consistently presented a more optimistic picture of the situation in Iraq than justified by intelligence reports from the field.

Spy agencies usually produce several national intelligence estimates each year on a variety of subjects. The most controversial of these in recent years was an October 2002 document assessing Iraq’s illicit weapons programs. Several government investigations have discredited that report, and the intelligence community is overhauling how it analyzes data, largely as a result of those investigations.

The broad judgments of the new intelligence estimate are consistent with assessments of global terrorist threats by American allies and independent terrorism experts.

Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat - New York Times

I hope this links correctly, because this is some of the worst pwnage I've ever seen a politician unleash on a reporter. Chris Wallace interviews Bill Clinton, asks a long accusatory question about why he didn't do more to kill Bin Laden, and gets a 13 minute ass whooping in return.

A must see. Gold star.

Clinton PWNS Chris Wallace on Fox News - Clinton Interviewed on Fox News Sunday - Google Video

And finally tonight, a Special Comment about President Clinton’s interview. The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.

It is not important that the current President’s "portable public chorus" has described his predecessor’s tone as "crazed."

Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as Al-Qaeda; the nation’s "marketplace of ideas" is being poisoned, by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit. Nonetheless.

The headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done, in five years. He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.

"At least I tried," he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. "That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried."

Thus in his supposed emeritus years, has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by anyone, in these last five long years.

The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama Bin Laden before 9/11.

The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.

The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S."

The Bush Administration… did… not… try.—

Crooks and Liars » Olbermann’s Special Comment: Are YOURS the actions of a true American?

How many right wing blogs are gunna link this one?

I was locked up and mistreated for being in the wrong place at the wrong time during America’s war in Afghanistan. Like hundreds of Guantánamo detainees, I was never a terrorist or a soldier. I was never even on a battlefield. Pakistani bounty hunters sold me and 17 other Uighurs to the United States military like animals for $5,000 a head. The Americans made a terrible mistake.

It was only the country’s centuries-old commitment to allowing habeas corpus challenges that put that mistake right — or began to. In May, on the eve of a court hearing in my case, the military relented, and I was sent to Albania along with four other Uighurs. But 12 of my Uighur brothers remain in Guantánamo today. Will they be stranded there forever?

Like my fellow Uighurs, I am a great admirer of the American legal and political systems. I have the utmost respect for the United States Congress. So I respectfully ask American lawmakers to protect habeas corpus and let justice prevail. Continuing to permit habeas rights to the detainees in Guantánamo will not set the guilty free. It will prove to the world that American democracy is safe and well.

I am from East Turkestan on the northwest edge of China. Communist China cynically calls my homeland “Xinjiang,” which means “new dominion” or “new frontier.” My people want only to be treated with respect and dignity. But China uses the American war on terrorism as a pretext to punish those who peacefully dissent from its oppressive policies. They brand as “terrorism” all political opposition from the Uighurs.

The View From Guantánamo

Great article on how Orwellian our government is becoming.

Five years have passed since the catastrophic terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Those attacks ushered in the war on terror. Since some high-ranking government officials and pundits are now referring to the war on terror as the "Long War" or "World War III," because its duration is not clear, now is an appropriate time to take a few steps back and examine the disturbing new vocabulary that has emerged from this conflict.

One of the central insights of George Orwell's classic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four concerned the manipulative use of language, which he called "newspeak" and "doublethink," and which we now call "doublespeak" and "Orwellian." Orwell was alarmed by government propaganda and the seemingly rampant use of euphemisms and halftruths— and he conveyed his discomfort with such tactics to generations of readers by using vivid examples in his novel. Despite our general awareness of the tactic, government officials routinely use doublespeak to expand, or at least maintain, their power.

The purpose of this paper is not to criticize any particular policy initiative. Reasonable people can honestly disagree about what needs to be done to combat the terrorists who are bent on killing Americans. However, a conscientious discussion of our policy options must begin with a clear understanding of what our government is actually doing and what it is really proposing to do next. The aim here is to enhance the understanding of both policymakers and the interested lay public by exposing doublespeak.

Doublespeak and the War on Terrorism

This story, in today's Guardian, is just mind-blowing. The common sleeping pill zolpidem, sold in the US under the name Ambien, can reverse serious brain damage and wake up patients in persistent vegetative states!

The hospital ward sister, Lucy Hughes, was periodically concerned that involuntary spasms in Louis's left arm, that resulted in him tearing at his mattress, might be a sign that deep inside he might be uncomfortable. In 1999, five years after Louis's accident, she suggested to Sienie that the family's GP, Dr Wally Nel, be asked to prescribe a sedative. Nel prescribed Stilnox, the brand name in South Africa for zolpidem. "I crushed it up and gave it to him in a bottle with a soft drink," Sienie recalls. "He couldn't swallow properly then, but I helped him and sat at his bedside. After about 25 minutes, I heard him making a sound like 'mmm'. He hadn't made a sound for five years.

"Then he turned his head in my direction. I said, 'Louis, can you hear me?' And he said, 'Yes.' I said, 'Say hello, Louis', and he said, 'Hello, mummy.' I couldn't believe it. I just cried and cried."

Zolpidem seems to work on PVS patients about 60% of the time, and is effective in the treatment of other brain injuries. Parts of the brain considered "dead" because of zero activity (but not deterioration or necrosis) return to life. It's not a cure -- the pill must be taken on an ongoing basis -- but it is a nearly-miraculous treatment.

Boing Boing: Ambien awakens persistent vegetative state victims

"I met my wife on your captcha!!!" -- Steve, from New York

Captcha that makes you pick the hottest person to confirm you are not a robot. Very cool.

Captcha Mashup