I'm having a lot of fun with Orkut, myself.

Today I went through my address book and invited a bunch of people who I thought might be interested (if I missed you, please accept my apologies and drop me a line, and I'll get you invited).

Oh, and one of my friends lives in Finland. When he got my invite, he got a hearty laugh out of it. Evidently in Finnish, the word "orkut" means "orgasms"! :)

He said:

I can hardly wait for the proper launch of orkut in Finland. I could pay something to be able to make the commercials.

About orkut:
"Orgasm is an online community website designed for friends. The main goal of our service is to make your social life, and that of your friends, more active and stimulating. orgasm's social network can help you both maintain existing relationships and establish new ones by reaching out to people you've never met before. Who you interact with is entirely up to you. Before getting to know an orgasm member, you can even see how they're connecting to you through the friends network.

orgasm makes it easy to find people who share your hobbies and interests, look for romantic connections or establish new business contacts. You can also create and join a wide variety of online communities to discuss current events, reconnect with old college buddies or even exchange cookies recipes.

To join orgasm, simply click on the link in the email you received and follow the instructions for creating a user name and password. If orgasm doesn't sound like it's for you, feel free to delete your invitation. If you change your mind in the future, don't worry! We'll still be here.

If you haven't yet received an invitation to join, please be patient. We'd love to immediately include everyone who wants to participate; however, we're also trying to ensure that orgasm remains a close-knit community. Over the next few weeks, hopefully, the network will grow to a point where everyone who wants to join has the opportunity to do so.

It is our mission to help you create a closer, more intimate network of friends. We hope to put you on the path to social bliss soon.

Orkut

Looks like the Opportunity had its own code to be solved, which is different from the one that Spirit had . . .

Mars Code #2

] This experiment is designed to test whether you can spot
] the difference between a fake smile and a real one
]
] It has 20 questions and should take you 10 minutes
]
] It is based on research by Professor Paul Ekman, a
] psychologist at the University of California

Personally, I suck at this kind of thing... I need more context than just a face. But I still found it interesting, especially the discussion at the end.

BBCi - Science - Human Body - Spot The Fake Smile

] We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program
] activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq
] concealed from the United Nations during the inspections
] that began in late 2002.
  . . .
] A clandestine network of laboratories and safehouses
] within the Iraqi Intelligence Service that contained
] equipment subject to UN monitoring and suitable for
] continuing CBW research.
 . . .
] Reference strains of biological organisms concealed in a
] scientist's home, one of which can be used to produce
] biological weapons.
]
] New research on BW-applicable agents, Brucella and Congo
] Crimean Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), and continuing work on
] ricin and aflatoxin were not declared to the UN

I think I meme-ed this report already from a different location, but I like this one better because it includes pictures.

Kay's Statement to Congress about Iraqi Weapons - October 2003

] The following 5,000 individuals make up the WSSRAP
] team...is your name on the list?

Okay, this is my "odd link of the day". I was doing a routine google search for something orkut-related, and ran across my name on this page. I had no idea what the page was though. Then I dug deeper. It's related to the "Weldon Spring" project, a Superfund-related cleanup site that I worked at as a temp secretary over 10 years ago.

Kind of odd to be included on the list as part of the team, considering how briefly I worked there!

Weldon Spring IC Team

Terratogen wrote:
] If you remember, Bush gave Suddaam a 3 day ultimatum to
] surrender the weapons of mass destruction he *knew* had to be
] in Iraq.

For the record, the final ultimatum was not a 3-day deadline to surrender WMD, it was a 48-hour ultimatum for Saddam and his sons to leave the country: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2857789.stm

] Blatently, the reasons we're in Iraq were not publicised by
] those who made the decision

I beg to differ. The world's unhappiness with Iraq was extremely well publicized and debated. The U.N. passed resolution after resolution condemning Iraq. Iraq wasn't a country that we were worried *might* use chemical weapons, Iraq was a country that verifiably *had* used chemical weapons, on multiple occasions, on thousands of people, military and civilian, including people in its own country. It wasn't a suspicion of something that Saddam *might* be capable of, it was a proven fact.

I supported the war in Iraq not just because I thought there were stockpiles of WMD there. I supported the war because there was a long history of Iraqi deception, U.N. resolutions were being blatantly ignored, and it was clear that Saddam had no intention of cooperating. I felt sure then, and I still feel confident now, that if left alone, Saddam would have continued to build arsenals, and would have done his best to build his empire by violent means. We already had military in Iraq from the last time he had invaded a neighboring country, Iraqis were regularly shooting at us over the no-fly zones, and I saw no circumstances on the horizon that would have allowed us to say, "Okay, things are better now, we can leave."

Now having said that, I will also agree that some of our intelligence was flawed, and that some things were said, by Bush and others, that later analysis has now shown was probably incorrect. I do not think that this means that they "lied", I think it means that they got their hands on some bad info. But there were still plenty of things that were said that *were* correct, and there were things that we had suspicions of, which have since been verified a hundred times over. Saddam really did have WMD at one point, and he was doing his level best to get more. Secrets really were being kept from U.N. Inspectors and from the world. Saddam had *not* given up on the idea of building an empire... He was just waiting for world scrutiny to go away.

So, I continue to stand by my original belief:

- The world's demand for the last many years, including in early 2003, was for Iraq to comply with U.N. demands to disarm.
- Iraq was clearly not complying with those demands.
- Something had to be done, and most countries didn't have the balls to do it.
- We did.
- The war was justified.
- And the world is a better place without Saddam.

Elonka

RE: Blair Defends War Decision

] The subject of this Update is Iraqi WMD and misuse of
] the statements since his resignation from the job of
] David Kay, who headed up US efforts to find Iraqi weapons
] since the war.

Two articles on this page that I found particularly of interest:

- Wall Street Journal, "Anti-Bush partisans aren't listening to what David Kay is Saying", January 28th, 2004

- Newsday, "Why the President was justified -- David Kay or not", January 27th, 2004. This one is especially interesting because it's by Ed Koch, the former *Democratic* Mayor of New York

There are also extracts from Kay's interview with the New York Times, January 26, 2004

Koch, in his conclusion, says:

] What all this means is that if Saddam Hussein had acted
] rationally, he could have avoided war. But he was not the
] rational leader of a nation. He was a sadistic despot who
] tortured and murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people
] and invaded other countries. He used poison gas against the
] Kurds and the Iranians. He set fire to more than 700 oil wells
] in Kuwait, creating an environmental catastrophe. The world is
] surely better off without him.

Iraqi WMD: What David Kay really said

I'm still disgusted with the way that Kay is being misquoted all over the place. So, if anyone's interested, here's a word-for-word transcript.

] KAY: I think Iraq was a dangerous place becoming more
] dangerous, because, in fact, what we observe is that the
] regime itself was coming apart. It was descending into
] worse the part of moral depravity and corruption. Saddam
] was isolated in a fantasy land capable of wreaking
] tremendous harm and terror on his individual citizens,
] but corruption, money gain was the root cause.
]
] At the same time that we know there were terrorist groups
] in state still seeking WMD capability. Iraq, although I
] found no weapons, had tremendous capabilities in this
] area. A marketplace phenomena was about to occur, if it
] did not occur; sellers meeting buyers. And I think that
] would have been very dangerous if the war had not
] intervened.
  . . .
] Iraq remained a very dangerous place in terms of WMD
] capabilities, even though we found no large stockpiles of
] weapons.

FOXNews.com Transcript: Interview with David Kay, February 1, 2004

] Blair said inspection teams had turned up evidence showing Saddam
] Hussein's "total, unrepentant, malignant intent" and his
] violation of United Nations resolutions -- enough to justify the
] U.S.-led invasion.
]
] "I accept (the inspectors) have not found what I and many others
] including Dr. (David) Kay confidently expected they would --
] actual weapons ready for immediate use," Blair said, referring to
] the former top U.S. inspector in Iraq.
]
] "But let others accept that what they have found are
] laboratories, technology, diagrams, documents, teams of
] scientists told to conceal their work on biological, nuclear and
] chemical weapons capability, that in sum amounts to breaches of
] the United Nations resolution," Blair said.
]
] "If all that the (Iraq Survey Group of inspectors) find is all
] that they have found, ... we would have been irresponsible in the
] highest degree not to have acted against Saddam and rid him and
] his loathsome regime from power," he said.

I would also point out that Kay himself said plenty of evidence of WMD programs were found in Iraq, *including* an active Ricin program that was only interrupted by our invasion last March. However, Kay's report continues to be misquoted all over the place. People seize on "no evidence of WMD stockpiles", and ignore everything else he said, such as the fact that he still thought the war was a good idea, and that it was still essential to keep looking, and that just because we haven't found stockpiles, does not mean that they didn't exist. It *was* confirmed by the U.N. that Iraq at one point had over 8000 liters of anthrax, and multiple tons of VX, but it's still uncertain as to just what exactly happened to those stockpiles.

Blair Defends War Decision

] Claim: A moratorium on Internet taxation expired on 1
] November 2003.
]
] Status: True.

I'm getting asked questions about this particular issue, so I'm meme-ing this page for future reference.

Snopes.com on the Internet Taxation Moratorium