Now, in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a "liberal," regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more "liberal" one is. Whether one is a "liberal" -- or, for that matter, a "conservative" -- is now no longer a function of one’s actual political views, but is a function purely of one’s personal loyalty to George Bush.

Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Do Bush followers have a political ideology?

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

Very few people have really paid attention to the banking surveillance. All kinds of transactions are carefully monitored by the feds.

Big Brother: Whats in your wallet?

Masked, plainclothes police carrying assault rifles staged a midnight raid on the country's oldest newspaper and its sister television station early Thursday, burning tens of thousands of newspapers in the most dramatic attack on the press in Kenya's history.

Boing Boing: Media shutdown in Kenya -- TV station, newspaper torched

Viacom has met with several of the handful of so-called Internet social networking businesses, but has not decided whether it would enter the market through partnerships or acquisitions.

Viacom to enter social networking market in '06 - Yahoo! News

Octavia Butler, the brilliant science fiction writer, reportedly died on Saturday following a fall.

Somehow I missed this. Very unfortunate.

Boing Boing: RIP, Octavia Butler,

A pact between the U.S. government and the electronic privacy company Anonymizer, Inc. is making the Internet a safer place for controversial websites and subversive opinions -- if you're Iranian.

This is old news, but I wasn't aware. Apparently the U.S. sponsers anonymizing web services. Thats neat. If they are really concerned about China they ought to do more of this.

US sponsors Anonymiser – if you live in Iran | The Register

Sending 250,000 multi-coloured 'superballs' bouncing down the streets of San Francisco may seem the strangest way to do this, but that's exactly what Danish director Nicolai Fuglsig did for the BRAVIA commercial in July this year.

This is old and has been discussed here before, but for some reason the main page isn't memed...

Sony BRAVIA - The Advert

It is an installation distributed between two locations in the world. Its “brain” consists of cultured nerve cells that grow in a neuro-engineering lab, in Atlanta. Its “body” is a robotic drawing arm that is capable of producing two-dimensional drawings. The “brain” and the “body” will communicate in real time with each other for the duration of the exhibition.

MEART will be performing in the Eye Drum Gallery Thursday
16th of March @ 19:00 - 1 show only.

Holy Fuck I am so there!

MEART

The poet Philip Larkin famously declared that the English discovered sex in 1963, but a new show at Tate Britain proposes the far earlier date of 1782, the year curious Londoners flocked to the Royal Academy's summer exhibition to look in amazement, confusion and excitement at Henry Fuseli's painting "The Nightmare."

There, amid the usual worthy portraits and landscapes, Fuseli's oil displayed the prostrate body of a sleeping maiden, with a depraved-looking ogre or incubus sitting on her chest and the head of a blind horse protruding menacingly through red velvet curtains. What could it mean?

Spirits, Gothic Fantasies and Sex, Please, We're British - New York Times

Bunch of jackass college students get on I285 in Atlanta and actually do the speed limit. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

A Meditation On the Speed Limit - Google Video