6. "I Have Taken The Amino Acid Sequence of H1N1 Swine Flu and Turned It Into a Piece of Ambient Music. Does This Interest You?"
Yes, Stephan Zielinski. Yes, it does. You can listen to Stephan's appropriately haunting, sad and beautiful composition on his Web site.

Swine Flu Q & A - Boing Boing

Rumors from late last week have come home to roost, and as part of its restructuring efforts, General Motors has just announced that Pontiac will be "phased out by the end of 2010." GM will continue to build its accelerated viability plan around four brands: Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC.

GM kills Pontiac

Decius wrote:

The report points to then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's approval of such techniques -- including stress positions, removal of clothing, use of phobias (such as fear of dogs), and deprivation of light and auditory stimuli -- in December 2002 for detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His OK prompted interrogators in Afghanistan and Iraq to adopt the aggressive techniques.

Apparently the "left wing conspiracy theorists" who argued that what happened at Abu Ghraib came from the top and was not the product of "bad apples" were, in fact, absolutely correct about that. Rumself personally authorized this.

In retrospect, I think I was wrong here. The abuses at Abu Ghraib went far beyond "use of phobias." They weren't authorized by this memo.

RE: The torture row is not going to go away.

David Leonhardt:

As long as home prices are falling, foreclosures are likely to keep rising and the toxic assets polluting bank balance sheets are likely to stay toxic.

There are reasons, though, to think that prices may be on the verge of stabilizing. Relative to fundamentals, like household incomes and rents, houses nationwide now appear to be overvalued by only about 5 percent. You can make an argument that the end of the housing crash is near.

But that’s not what I found at the auctions.

Almost posted this earlier - Atlanta doesn't look so bad from this perspective.

The Bottom for Housing Is Probably Not Near

If you enjoyed the boss video you'll like this one, although its a little less over the top.

YouTube - The Lonely Island (SNL) - I'm On A Boat (ft. T-Pain) - Uncensored Video (Album Version)

Well, this certainly goes in an unexpected direction.

Like A Boss (ft. Seth Rogen) - Uncensored Version

Karpinski was one of two officers punished over the aggressive interrogations at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Throughout the ordeal, Karpinski maintained that she and her troops were following interrogation guidelines approved by top brass. Today, Karpinski has found validation in a few Bush-era memos released last week by the Obama administration.

The report points to then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's approval of such techniques -- including stress positions, removal of clothing, use of phobias (such as fear of dogs), and deprivation of light and auditory stimuli -- in December 2002 for detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. His OK prompted interrogators in Afghanistan and Iraq to adopt the aggressive techniques.

The guidance was delivered to Abu Ghraib by then-Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was summoned to Baghdad from Guantanamo to evaluate the prison system.

Apparently the "left wing conspiracy theorists" who argued that what happened at Abu Ghraib came from the top and was not the product of "bad apples" were, in fact, absolutely correct about that. Rumself personally authorized this. This is a political issue.

In light of this, Obama has apparently softened his prior stance against prosecuting former administration officials. There is a risk that such prosecutions could turn into a political circus, but its starting to look like the situation is going to demand them anyway.

Its bad. Real bad.

The new report includes testimony from an Army psychologist at Guantanamo Bay who described increasingly relentless pressure from Washington in the summer of 2002 to use harsher methods on detainees. "[T]his is my opinion, even though they were giving information and some of it was useful, while we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between AI Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful in establishing a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq," Army Maj. Paul Burney told investigators. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link...there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

Torture used to produce false confessions needed to justify a war! That is EXACTLY why Torture is illegal.

If this is true, the leadership of the Bush administration could go to prison. This could be very, very bad for the country.

The torture row is not going to go away.

On the night of March 8, cruising 22,000 miles above the Earth, U.S. Navy communications satellite FLTSAT-8 suddenly erupted with illicit activity. Jubilant voices and anthems crowded the channel on a junkyard's worth of homemade gear from across vast and silent stretches of the Amazon: Ronaldo, a Brazilian soccer idol, had just scored his first goal with the Corinthians.

It was a party that won't soon be forgotten. Ten days later, Brazilian Federal Police swooped in on 39 suspects in six states in the largest crackdown to date on a growing problem here: illegal hijacking of U.S. military satellite transponders. null

This is so ridiculously and awesomely Gibson-esque. Hordes of low tek from The Sprawl hacking military satellites with homebrew gear and hacker know-how.

Unbelievably Excellent!

The Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown

Separate developers in Buckhead are building four speculative office buildings at the same time with virtually no leasing activity. The 35 recent condominium projects will help give Atlanta a 40-year supply at the current sales pace. A $600 million outdoor shopping mall under way has suspended construction to save money.

So they tore up the nightlife district that was once considered one of the most attractive features of this city and replaced it with - a huge fucking hole in the ground.

George, who is in charge of building the project, said a fall 2010 opening date is still feasible. The large construction cranes on the site will remain. He added that Carter is current on all payments.

“This job’s going to happen,” said George. “I’m convinced this job will move forward. There’s no doubt in our minds.”

Yeah, right. You know, there is a big building project in southern Manhattan. They're hard at work on it every time I go by there. I'm sure the walls will be up any day now... any day... after all, its prime real estate! They can't leave it vacant for ever, can they?

"It may take five years, it may take 10 years," she said, "but it's not going to take 21 years."

Wanna bet?

Buckhead Redevelopment = EPIC FAIL

I liked this:

Evil people love and worship temporal things, i.e., things that cannot be possessed without the fear of losing them, and always live therefore in fear. China's tormented first emperor, Qin lived in constant fear of losing his empire or his life, and did great evil in the process of trying to possess them. Augustine said good people escape fear by loving only the things that can't be destroyed, a concept lost on Chinese emperors, Egyptian pharaohs, and most of American suburbanites.

His earlier post is an interesting prophesy for America:

The seeds of her demise were sown in her successes. Her populace became rich and fat and ever less willingly to endure for even the shortest time any dislocation in their comfort. The sacrifices of their forebears were quickly forgotten for the culture of instant gratification made possible by their regal throne atop world hegemony...

The fat and comfortable populace was relieved from the burden of defending their wealth and comfort by the institution of an all-volunteer military that drew heavily from new immigrant and lower-class populations. The years without an existential threat lulled the populace into a false sense of security, and they either didn't realize or didn't care that they were fast losing control over the means of protecting their way of life...

It elected leaders that weren't leaders, but were instead just men in suits hired to tell the populace what it wanted to hear...

The empire could no longer afford its far-flung outposts, and had to retrieve its troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, Korea, Germany, Japan, etc. The troops returned home to a society slipping slowly into anarchy, and were soon put to work quelling the unrest.

I don't really think its going to go down like that. Winston Churchill said "The Americans will always do the right thing . . . After they've exhausted all the alternatives."

As far as the economic contraction is concerned, I fear we're still exhausting alternatives.

An insightful observation...