Tens of millions of people unemployed, inflation spiraling out of control, the government instituting price controls that result in shortages and blackouts and long lines for things. I think things are going to get very bad.

Financial doomsayer Schiff still grim on future - Forbes.com

Clearly, to adhere to our style rules, F.D.R. should have said “that.” This is a restrictive clause defining the “date” we’re talking about. (In fact, the Columbia World of Quotations, among other sources, renders the quote incorrectly online, substituting “that.”)

Perhaps Roosevelt thought, as many writers and speakers seem to do, that “which” sounded more elevated or powerful. Or perhaps he was influenced by British usage, which often employs “which” in restrictive clauses. In any case, we’re prepared to allow an exception here.

I've been hounded by Microsoft Word about this "grammatical error" for years. I had no idea it was a British vs. American English thing. IMHO, some sentences just sound better with which rather than that. Some sentences sound better the other way. I guess most Americans religiously use that?

Simplify, Simplify - Times Topics Blog - NYTimes.com

Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich and his Chief of Staff, John Harris, were arrested today by FBI agents on federal corruption charges alleging that they and others are engaging in ongoing criminal activity: conspiring to obtain personal financial benefits for Blagojevich by leveraging his sole authority to appoint a United States Senator; threatening to withhold substantial state assistance to the Tribune Company in connection with the sale of Wrigley Field to induce the firing of Chicago Tribune editorial board members sharply critical of Blagojevich; and to obtain campaign contributions in exchange for official actions – both historically and now in a push before a new state ethics law takes effect January 1, 2009.

Yeesh!

cbs2chicago.com - Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich Arrested By Federal Agents

This campaign began when the death of Seetha Vemireddy, a 17 year-old bonded slave at a restaurant in Berkeley, CA, came to the attention of professor David Batstone. By learning to recognize forced labor and report it, you can help people like Seetha gain their freedom. SlaveryMap was created for this purpose.

SlaveryMap

More on Clean Feed.

Because of the Internet Watch Foundation blacklisting, British internet service providers are currently redirecting Wikipedia traffic to a proxy server.

The technical architecture of the British censorship filter directs all traffic to "suspicious IPs" through a proxy server, so now all wikipedia traffic from the UK is being proxied, which breaks Wikipedia's twit filters.

When British editors log in via that proxy server, Wikipedia’s systems cannot verify their unique IP addresses, and is blocking most access to British editors because it cannot adequately verify them.

Um, passwords?
The censors have put out a press release defending their actions.

"As with all child sexual abuse reports received by our hotline analysts, the image was assessed according to the U.K. Sentencing Guidelines Council. The content was considered to be a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18," the IWF said in a statement.

Apparently they also called the British police, and "international partners" who presumably include American entities, who might have also informed American police, which begs the question: Will U.S. Law Enforcement raid Wikipedia? Will they go through the logs and raid everyone who has viewed this Wikipedia page?

"Do we need to worry the police will come and confiscate our record collections?" asked David Gerard, a Wikipedia editor in London.

Good question! Think it can't happen? Guess what? It gets worse. Way worse.

In a WND poll related to the story, the No. 1 response, at more than 47 percent, had readers saying Wikipedia is clearly violating U.S. obscenity laws and should face prosecution.

Oh, and BTW, its not just the picture that was banned:

Wikipedia declined to remove the album cover. "We are particularly displeased that the IWF chose to censor not solely the image, but also the explanatory article text which described and contextualized the controversy surrounding the image, in a neutral and educational fashion," the foundation said in a statement.

Wikipedia Blocks British Editors Amid Censorship Flap | Threat Level from Wired.com

There's only one girl. Hope we get to meet the other one soon

[sigh]. So so true.

"The Ratio" THE GTGs, Georgia Tech's gtg491y & gtg562h

Truly productive invention requires the meeting of minds from myriad perspectives, even if the innovators themselves don’t always realize it.

Unboxed - For Innovators, There Is Brainpower in Numbers - NYTimes.com

Poised as the world's leading supplier of green tea, ITO EN is dedicated to the promotion of the fine taste, traditions, and benefits of green tea.

Generally speaking, Americans are not fond of drinking unsweet tea. Although (blessfully) many restaurants in the south offer it, you're not actually supposed to drink it that way. It always comes delivered with a collection of sweetener packets and with a big spoon sticking out of the glass, and I've gotten my share of odd looks from waiters when the first thing I do is pull the spoon out and then proceed to drink the beverage au naturale.

You're supposed to drink corn syrup. Coke in some areas, Pepsi in others. In the south sweet tea is an accepted substitute and unsweet is offered merely as an accommodation to diabetics, who are expected to load the beverage up with their artificial sweetener of choice if they aren't willing to drink one of the high tech "diet" beverages the cola companies are pushing. Don't believe me? Try to buy unsweet tea in a can. Good luck with that. I really wonder what the hell diabetic people in the United States drank before artificial sweetener was invented.

The recent popularity of green tea has resulted in a number strange iced green tea beverages hitting the market here. They can't just sell iced green tea in a bottle. No way. Americans aren't going to drink that! Often these green tea concoctions are so loaded with corn syrup that they are worse for you than cola! Diet versions are offered with those same high tech sweeteners, or honey. This is not what green tea is supposed to taste like!

The reason people in Japan are healthier than you isn't because anti-oxidants in green tea have some sort of magical power. Its because for every corn syrupy cola or rat poisoned diet beverage you've slugged away in your life they have chosen to drink a natural beverage without any sweeteners. And it tastes better that way! Fortunately the company that makes a significant portion of Japan's unsweet green tea does bottle and sell their product in America. You can order cases of it off of their website, but I ran into two liter bottles at Target recently.

It tastes good, its good for you, and its got plenty of caffeine. Please pick up a bottle and keep them in business over here so I don't have to go back to trying to brew the stuff myself!

Ito En

Wikinews has learned that six of the United Kingdom's main Internet Service Providers (ISPs) have implemented monitoring and filtering mechanisms that are causing major problems for UK contributors of the popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation sites. The filters appear to stem from accusations that Wikimedia sites are hosting what some would call child pornography.

More here including an interesting rant in the thread from Cory Doctorow.* I think we're going to see this sort of infrastructure in the United States very soon, so this is worth paying attention to.

* During this rant he states that the mantra of "no security through obscurity" is "axiomatic to every field of information security." In fact, its an oversimplified idea that is constantly misunderstood and misapplied. Peter Swire gave the topic a very good treatment here. I don't bring this up because I want to undermine Doctorow's point about the need for an open process around these internet filters. I agree with him. I just bristle at the use of words like "axiomatic" to refer to policy preferences. Its a way of shouting down nuance.

CleanFeed: BoingBoing reports on the UK's Net Nanny

The virus behind cold sores is a major cause of the insoluble protein plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer's disease sufferers, University of Manchester researchers have revealed.

Cold Sore Virus Linked To Alzheimer's Disease: New Treatment, Or Even Vaccine Possible