"I don't think the report is true, but these crises work for those who want to make fights between people." Kulam Dastagir, 28, a bird seller in Afghanistan
Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on Election Night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush's re-election?
The answer appears to be yes. There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website -- which gave the world the presidential election results -- was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's firing of eight federal prosecutors.
This is troubling. Comments on Slashdot are informative. Its not really clear there is a problem here beyond the fact that Ohio (like many states) has a partisan appointee running their elections commission and they picked the same outsourcing partner. I think elections in the US should be operated by the federal government. Basically, the propriety of Ohio's elections impacts who my President is, and so I ought to have a say in how they operate their election.
Existing home sales pace, prices fall again in March - Apr. 24, 2007
Topic: Miscellaneous
3:55 pm EDT, Apr 24, 2007
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Home sales posted their sharpest drop in 18 years in March, a real estate group said Tuesday, as problems in the subprime mortgage sector pushed sales well below what economists had forecast.
Wiccans will be allowed to place pentacles on graves, VA says
Topic: Civil Liberties
3:15 pm EDT, Apr 23, 2007
Wiccans will be allowed to have the symbol of their religion placed on grave markers in national cemeteries under a lawsuit settlement with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced Monday.
Pollock's Fractals | Physics & Math | DISCOVER Magazine
Topic: Arts
10:18 am EDT, Apr 23, 2007
In 1949, when Life magazine asked if Jackson Pollock was "the greatest living painter in the United States," the resulting outcry voiced nearly half a century of popular frustration with abstract art. Some said their splatter boards were better than Pollock's work. Others said that a trained chimpanzee could do just as well. A Pollock painting, one critic complained, is like "a mop of tangled hair I have an irresistible urge to comb out."
Yet Pollock's reputation has outlived his detractors. A retrospective of his work several years ago at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City drew lines around the block, and an award-winning film of his life and art was released at the end of 2000. Apparently "Jack the Dripper" captured some aesthetic dimension—some abiding logic in human perception—beyond the scope of his critics. That logic, says physicist and art historian Richard Taylor, lies not in art but in mathematics—specifically, in chaos theory and its offspring, fractal geometry.
Failure is an under-recognized alternative rock band from the early to mid 90's. Their last album, Fantastic Planet, didn't really have a bad song on it. I like this track, and the live recording here is fairly clear.
This is what I don't get... I go to CNN the other day and they have a picture of the VT killer pointing a gun at the camera.... On their main page above the fold, pointing a gun at me. And I have to look at that. And that's "journalism." That's "my right to know." But at the same time, in his rant, he says things like fuck, and motherfucker, and I can't see that. I don't get to hear that. The media has protected me from that. And thats supposed to make sense. Its supposed to be natural for the media to want to protect my innocent ears from hearing the word fuck, but it is their obliglation to show me a shocking photograph of a murderer pointing a hand gun at a camera. On their front page.
Do you think normal people are sane?
Here is another thing I don't get. We used to be a free country. It used to be the case that if the President felt that you should be arrested that you would receive a fair trial with assistance of counsel before a jury of your peers. But thats gone. Today, the President can detain you for any reason indefinately, without trial. There is no bill of rights anymore. Its impossible in such circumstances, because checks and balances, which no longer exist, are the keystone of freedom.
But we have an individual who masterminded a plot to blow up an airplane containing 73 innocent people. And he is free, in this country, because, it was in our interests. In my mind, the murder of 73 innocent people is never... moral..... But he is free... In this country, and the tools that exist to detain people without trial are not being used against him. Perhaps the death of those 73 innocent people reduced my tax burden. Perhaps many in this country support this. It doesn't make any sense to me. I don't get it.
"It is now pretty well established that certain types of videos and images have an effect on behavior," New York Governor Eliot Spitzer told reporters yesterday. Spitzer wants video games that are "degrading" to minors regulated the same way as cigarettes for those under 18. Retailers who would sell or rent these "not appropriate" games to minors would face fines.
The Democratic governor plans to give details about his plans this Friday in a Manhattan speech before Rev. Al Sharpton's National Action Network. Like wagering how many times President Bush will bring up 9/11 in a speech, start placing your bets now on how long it'll take Spitzer to bring up the VT massacre in his speech.
Today, News Corp. launches their news aggregation service called MySpace News. The service is best described as Google News meets Digg. This is not an unexpected move. When MySpace parent company Fox Interactive acquired NewRoo this time last year in a deal reportedly in the single-digit millions, the clock began ticking on the release of a MySpace news aggregator.
Sometime after he killed two people in a Virginia university dormitory but before he slaughtered 30 more in a classroom building, Cho Seung-Hui mailed NBC News a large package including photographs and videos Monday morning, boasting, “When the time came, I did it. I had to.”
The package included an 1,800-word manifesto-like statement diatribe in which Cho expresses rage, resentment and a desire to get even.
The material does not include any images of the shootings Monday, but it does contain vague references. And it mentions “martyrs like Eric and Dylan” — apparently a reference to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold...
The material is deeply angry, crying out against unspecified wrongs done to him in a diatribe laced with profanity.
“I didn’t have to do this. I could have left. I could have fled. But no, I will no longer run. It’s not for me. For my children, for my brothers and sisters that you f---, I did it for them,” Cho says on one of the videos.
