] The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The
] Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

Looks like you can download the audio version of this book on itunes.

Amazon.com: Books: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

] Some detected animus toward Edwards in Ifill's
] interrogations but for me the overwhelming impression,
] which I've gathered over the years from watching her on
] PBS's Wash Week in Review, is that this is a person with
] a case of the cutes. There's a preening coyness to her,
] as if she's smiling at herself rather than at the camera
] and expecting a cookie.

She did a good job of putting them both on the spot, but on the other hand, the "without using his name" bit was quite silly. This isn't a game show. (At least its not supposed to be.)

Gwen Awful

] William F. Buckley
] Convention Bloggers
] Tim Berners-Lee
] Gore Vidal
] Lawrence Lessig
] Joe Trippi
] Adam Curry
] Wesley Clark
] Joi Ito
] John Edwards
] Howard Dean
] The Daily Kos
] Doc Searls
] David Weinberger
] Dave Winer

This podcasting concept seems like nothing new at all, but if people are going to be putting cool audio content up there it sure would be nice to know about it.

This set of interviews seems very interesting. Where else are you going to find Dave Winer, Adam Curry, and William F. Buckley all in the same place?

Christopher Lydon Interviews...

] The Discovery Institute's appeals to academic freedom
] create a kind of catch-22. If scientists ignore the ID
] movement, their silence is offered as further evidence of
] a conspiracy. If they join in, they risk reinforcing the
] perception of a battle between equal sides. Most
] scientists choose to remain silent. "Where the scientific
] community has been at fault," says Krauss, "is in
] assuming that these people are harmless, like
] flat-earthers. They don't realize that they are well
] organized, and that they have a political agenda."

Wired published a fairly long article on the creationist revival. It was interesting sort of as a microcosm of the anti-scientific thinking that is consuming our political and social lives:

Develop convictions.
Never think critically about your position.
Come up with a strategy for advocating your perspective.

Don't engage people who disagree with you unless it has a strategic purpose. Do not listen to them. They are the enemy. Your goal is to defeat them. They are evil, and everything they say hides an ulterior motive.

The jaw dropping thing was the end. George Gilder: The creationist. George Gilder has been a major leader in the technical community for over a decade. He was the sooth sayer of the internet boom in the early nineties. The U.S. made significant policy decisions based on this vision.

The telecom crash has hurt his credibility because he didn't forsee it. Some people have been wondering whether he should have been listened to, but most of the tech community still thinks of him as a leader.

But to go to an audience like Wired, which is primarily read by engineers and technical business people, and associate yourself with creationism? People who make their living from applied science; people who understand the history of technology in unparalleled detail... hundreds of years of using the scientific method to investigate natural phenomena and harness them. And you go to them and tell them that conclusions ought to precede the collection of evidence! Thats an amazing thing. Like a rock star blowing his brains out at a concert in front of a million fans.

Its important for that reason. George Gilder is dead.

Wired 12.10: George Gilder is Dead!

] Emory University officials sent warning letters to more
] than 500 surgery patients at the school's medical center
] after a brain surgery patient tested positive for a fatal
] disease similar to the human version of mad cow disease.

ABCNEWS.com : Warnings Sent to Emory Brain Patients

Is it moral to use tax payer dollars to fund things that a large group of people in a society feel are totally immoral or unethical? Stated another way, is it ok to force people to pay for something they think is immoral, or should we have a broad moral consensus on something before we spend public money on it.

Examples:
On the right:
Government funding for embryonic stem cell research.
Government funding for abortions.
Certain tax benefits for homosexual life partners.
NEA funding of offensive artwork.

On the left:
The Iraq war.
Government vouchers for private religious schools.
Government funding for faith based charities.
Tax credits for large SUVs.

] Dark Tips: Mag Stripe Secrets
] Being the curious lad that he is, Kevin wanted to know
] what information is contained on the little magnetic
] stripe on his credit cards, grocery club cards, Starbucks
] card, etc. With the V3-4 Magstripe Reader from Omron
] ($40) adapted by Yoshi to a DB-15 male connector, you can
] swipe your own cards to see what;s on them. Just get
] a copy of StripeSnoop and you're on your way; note
] that some stripe have multiple tracks.

Congrats Acidus!

Stripe Snoop.... ON THE SCREENSAVERS!

] The time to reassert the right of the American people to
] instruct the court through the Legislative and Executive
] branches has come. America is a free nation and it is the
] duty of those who would represent the American people to
] find mechanisms for our generation which block activist
] judges from stripping us of the freedoms and values we
] believe in.

I used to like Newt Gingrich. Always saw him as a forward thinking, libertarian sort of Republican. I was wrong. He is regressive. He just flushed any respect I ever had. Its gone.

There is absolutely no element of the Republican's anti-constitutional platform that "preserves freedoms." Not one element. They want to censor the media, they want to harrass gays, they want to ban abortions (despite their supposed emphasis on healthy families), they want to force everyone in the country to practice their religion and recognize their god, they want to imprison people for protesting the government.

How dare he evoke Thomas Jefferson in the context of attempting to establish a Conservative Christian government! Thomas Jefferson was the foremost advocate of the separation of church and state! Thomas Jefferson is the reason that the Conservative Christian adgenda is illegal!

Runaway courts - The Washington Times: Editorials/OP-ED - September 23, 2004

] Gmail was created by the web search company Google in
] April 2004 amid much excitement as every user is promised
] an unprecedented gigabyte of storage space for messages.
] Google encourages users to keep all their old messages
] and automatically searches these to determine what kind
] of web advertisements might interest users.
]
] But Gmail's copious storage space has inspired a number
] of programmers to come up with completely novel ways of
] using the service.
]
] These include a "weblog" or online message board that
] uses Gmail to store postings and a desktop file system
] that plugs straight into the Gmail system.

Article: Google's Gmail inspires imaginative 'hacks' | New Scientist

167799452 --
i anonymously emailed a friend a weblink that took him to the infamous "Goatse" site. He opened it work and has since been sacked. It's all my fault.

185012692 --
i want to marry harry.... god i love you

850432718 --
i want to have sex with other girls
i want a boyfriend and a girlfriend but i don't want them to like each other, just me
i don't think anyone can love me

434407232 --
I will kill myself with the gun I have a 3 day wait on.

268603779 --
I collect pictures of unicorns and rainbows and I'm a straight guy.

Group Hug // anonymous online confessions