] Also, as always, the pretty girls and cops
] are on my side, most of them barely able to conceal their
] eye-rolling

Wow... I'm hardly suprised the USA Today yanked this one. Yeah, I know lots of pretty democrats. I also seriously doubt the Boston Police are staunch republicans. Site is kind of slashdotted right now.

Ann Coulter's USA Today Column

tina wrote:

] Carter was one of the angrier speakers of the night, blasting
] the Bush admin. for ruining our name and our human rights
] record which he worked so hard to improve.

Don't miss Tina's blow by blow coverage of the DNC in her MemeStream.

I'm avoiding anything and everything having to do with the DNC because I see it as a big commercial, but having someone here providing quick executive summaries is nice. I get straight facts without having to listen to some idiot journalist yarn on about Hillary's outfit.

RE: The DNC: send me!

] "I think that bloggers have put the issue of
] professionalism under attack," said Thomas McPhail,
] professor of media studies at the University of
] Missouri-St. Louis, who argues that journalists should be
] professionally credentialed. "They have no pretense to
] objectivity. They don't cover both sides."

This article seems to be pissing people off. I think its good. If the press isn't spinning you you're not doing something useful.

The New York Times - The Internet: Web Diarists Are Now Official Members of Convention Press Corps

] The two brothers who created the fantastic "This Land"
] parody -- sending up President Bush, Senator Kerry, and
] the current state of American democracy to the tune of
] "This Land is Your Land" -- have been threatened with a
] copyright lawsuit.

Of interest...

EFF: This Land isn't your land

] So i replaced eliza's tiny, boring script with a massive
] dumb blonde script that has like 3,800 responses on all
] sorts of topics, but mostly sex. jenny18 is very horny
] and she loves talking to horny guys. and everyone knows
] the best place to talk to horny guys is on dalnet irc sex
] channels.

Oh god this is funny! The best part is when it runs into another bot!

IRC Sex Bot

UPDATE: There are some very interesting posts flying around about this guy being an ebay scam artist:

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/07/26/stargate_fansite_ope.html

People he has screwed are all over the place talking about it in the context of this story. Kind of brings his credibility into question.

] However, instead of thanking Adam for his promotion of
] their product, officials at MGM and the MPAA have chosen
] to pressure the FBI into pursuing criminal charges. Adam
] was first tipped off about the investigation when the FBI
] raided his and his fiancee's apartment in May of 2002 and
] seized thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment.
] Adam later received a copy of the affidavit filed in
] support of the search warrant, and was shocked to
] discover that this document, prepared by the FBI,
] contained significant amounts of erroneous and misleading
] information. For example, two social security numbers
] were listed for Adam, one of which is not his. References
] were made to a cease and desist letter sent by the MPAA
] to an email address that did not exist. His online
] friendship with other Stargate fans across the globe was
] portrayed as an international conspiracy against the
] MPAA. And perhaps most disturbing of all, it was later
] revealed that the FBI invoked a provision of the USA
] Patriot Act to obtain financial records from his ISP. The
] FBI's abuse of its powers did not stop there. When they
] seized Adam's computer equipment, he was given written
] documentation stating that it would be returned within 60
] days. The equipment that they did return did not arrive
] until more than 8 months later, and only then after much
] prodding from his lawyer. Much of it was damaged beyond
] repair - one laptop had a shattered LCD screen, an empty
] tape backup drive was ripped apart for no apparent
] reason, his fiancee's iBook was badly damaged when it was
] pried apart with a screwdriver.

1. Welcome to the new world of criminal copyright prosecutions. This reminds me of operation Sun Devil. The FBI is usually far more professional then this. Apparently they've assigned a bunch of idiots to their copyright sqaud, which is reasonable at first glance in that its not very important, but ultimately a mistake because this issue is too controversial and too visible to be handled by thugs. These guys aren't going to stop behaving this way until a judge throws the book at them (as occured to the Chicago Secret Service agents who raided Steve Jackson Games). Therefore, I suggesting holding on to your seats. There will be a bunch more stories where this came from, and as the net is a hell of a lot louder then it was in 1991 you can expect the FBI to feel some very serious pressure over the issue as the horrors mount up.

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Stargate Information Archive - Federal Charges Filed Against SG-1 Archive

] It's the economy, John Kerry.
]
] That's what delegates to the Democratic National
] Convention say their presumed presidential nominee or --
] they shudder to think -- President Bush should
] concentrate on first in 2005, an Associated Press survey
] of Democratic delegates found.
]
] Health care was the No. 2 issue, followed by the war in
] Iraq, according to the survey of some three-quarters of
] the 4,300-plus delegates.

I think this is a very serious mistake. This election is a referendum on Bush, and how his administration has handled security and foreign policy in the wake of 9/11. As long as Kerry can maintain the perception that Bush has loused things up and that he can fix it he can will the election. This is not very difficult to do in the wake of the failure to discover WMD and the difficult security situation in Iraq.

Putting out a numbered list of priorities, and putting national security in the middle of list, communicates only one thing, and that is that national security is not our top priority. This creates a fundamental weakness that will be easy for the Republicans to exploit. They can send the message that they care more about national security then the Democrats do, and if people believe that message the Republicans will win the election. A terrorist attack in this season would play right into that fissure.

Healthcare is a very serious problem in this country, but no one understands it better then the people who operate businesses. In other words, as most voters don't operate businesses they are unlikely to understand how serious the problem is. They understand 9/11. And frankly, they understand that healthcare won't help much if they are victim of an attack no matter how affordable it is.

AP Survey: Top priority of Democratic delegates? It's the economy

Like the heads in a VCR, the ones in card readers can wear out. After all, they are reading cards at an extraordinary rate. The busiest turnstile in the subway system, turnstile No. 10 in the middle array by the escalators in the main entrance to the subway below Grand Central Terminal, reads a whopping 236,000 cards a month.

I thought that was a neat factoid. I can imagine New Yorkers saying to themselves, "I know that turnstile!"

The article is rich in trivia about heavy-duty magnetic card readers and the millions of people who (ab)use them.

Mastering the Art of the Swipe

I don't have time to read this now, but I thought I'd share it in case you're up late and looking for an interesting read. The last time you ignored Scott Ritter we went to war and it turned out he was right.

IHT: Saddam's people are winning the war - Scott Ritter

"Chicken hawk" is interesting as an insult because it is such a pure example of reactionary thinking or, rather, the substitution of reaction for thinking. It is the sort of thing you say when you need to stop the argument in its tracks because you simply can't bear to address its realities.

Return of the 'Chicken Hawks'