] This is what the Earth looks like at night.

[ These pictures are increasingly easy to locate, but still always impress me. Very cool. -k]

APOD: 2004 August 22 - Earth at Night

] The John Kerry presidential campaign has filed a
] complaint with the Federal Election Commission alleging
] the veterans' group behind an anti-Kerry TV ad was
] illegally coordinating its efforts with the Bush-Cheney
] campaign.

[ I don't think this is a good way to go, really. There doesn't seem to be enough hard evidence of collusion or coordination here to warrant it and it makes Kerry look like a whiner, which is a silly epithet, but people are fickle enough to vote based on things like that.

Kerry shouldn't be vulnerable on this issue, at least not against Bush, whose records are still incomplete, but running to the FEC like this will make some people think he's trying to unfairly silence his opponents free speech. I think it's gonna do more harm than good. -k]

Kerry campaign files FEC complaint against TV ads

] This I Love Bees thing seems to be getting out of hand.
] It is some kind of massive alternate reality game that
] may be related to Halo 2. The site has been counting down
] to August 24th and now it looks like it is heading into
] meatspace. Now there are all these GPS coordinates where
] people are planning to go to all over the U.S. on
] Tuesday.

[ I've been seeing this bees thing pop up here and there for a week or so... Tycho of Penny Arcade mentioned it, and it's hit BoingBoing here... I haven't gotten involved, but it seems pretty clever from the hints and notes i've seen. we'll see what happens tomorrow... -k]

Boing Boing: Augmented reality Halo derivative goes nutso

] The world's sole superpower holds an election to decide
] the fate of the planet. Two men, both Yale-educated, are
] facing off in one of the most contentious campaigns in
] their nation's history. And an influential Congressional
] staffer releases an album called simply Campaign Songs
] under the pseudonym "the integral" to protect his
] identity. Tippecanoe and Cheney too.

[ Haven't played any but the concept is intriguing. -k]

Campaign Song Remixes

An amazing origami dragon.

[ Yeah, that rules... -k]

Yahoo! News - World Photos - AP

Its almost 2005. It seems like time stopped on September 11th and hasn't really moved forward since. Everything since has been a dream... It doesn't feel like the decade is half over.

This decade doesn't have a style yet. It doesn't have a message. It doesn't have music. And its half over. The only thing about 200x is blogs and terrorists and camera phones. What the fuck? By 1995 we had seen the rise and fall of grunge rock. By 1985 we'd had Atari and Devo and MTV and Madonna and RunDMC. In 1975 we had disco and Ozzy. In 2005 we ain't got shit.

What are the cultural themes of this decade??

1. Strife - Terror. Fear. Security. War. Partisanship.
2. Marketing killed the human spirit - The new music sucks because its too marketed. Too much a product and not a statement. The spirit of the Olympic Games is hard to hold onto when people are getting fired for wearing the wrong brand of tennis shoes. The internet is a cesspool of pop up-ads and spam. You can't believe in anything anymore because the minute someone makes something worth believing in they try to use it to sell soda pop.
3. Bloggers.

Is that it? Am I being too cynical here? What am I missing?

[ No, that sounds pretty accurate. The only bright spot I see is that all this seriousness and stagnation will presage a serious explosion of creativitiy when it finally breaks. I think the Tens are gonna be pretty rad. -k]

What is this decade all about?

] TypeKey helps ensure that people who comment on a site
] have a verified identity, keeping conversations on track
] and helping to prevent abusive or offensive content
] (comment spam) from being posted.

Moveable Type's solution to comment spam was to build their own version of Microsoft Passport.

[ Yeah, i saw that and promptly ignored it, becuase of the very issues you bring up. I use a blacklist filter for mine, and as long as I keep it up to date, it works fabulously. The next version is probably gonna have automatic blacklist updating, so I might be able to get out of manually updating that too. I see no real benefit to this TypeKey crap and plenty of negatives. -k]

TypeKey

Good tech site.

[ Interesting to see this get resurrected. The 4 element thread spans about 3 years, as people discover and meme the dot.

I've been reading it for what seems like eternity (user 15012) and i still check it every day, at least once. I don't spend much time in the threads, but I do meme stories I find there, so it's clearly still relevant to me. Do other old-time slashdot readers still find it worthwhile? -k]

Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters

] The images presented on this page show a selection of the
] types of art that can be created using POV-Ray. To a new
] user the concept of creating such images may seem
] daunting, but remember - all of the artists featured here
] were one day new users themselves.

[ Holy crap! Some of these are completely sick... really, really dope. -k]

POVCOMP 2004: Hall of Fame

] THE PRESIDENT: Yes, sir.
]
] Q On behalf of Vietnam veterans -- and I served six tours
] over there -- we do support the President. I only have
] one concern, and that's on the Purple Heart, and that is,
] is that there are over 200,000 Vietnam vets that died
] from Agent Orange and were never -- no Purple Heart has
] ever been awarded to a Vietnam veteran because of Agent
] Orange because it's never been changed in the
] regulations. Yet, we've got a candidate for President out
] here with two self-inflicted scratches, and I take that
] as an insult. (Applause.)
]
] THE PRESIDENT: Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank
] you for your service. Six tours? Whew. That's a lot of
] tours.
]
] Let's see, who've we got here? You got a question?

[ Whew! Fabulous answer.

I will say that Bush gave an actually decent response to the next completely asinine question: "I've heard through the grapevine that Oregon is one of the most unchurched states in the union, and I really feel like it shows up in every walk of our society. Could you take a moment to pray for Oregon, for us, right now?"

"Um, Mr. President, could you please, right now, publicly endorse my narrow and ridiculous viewpoint, and in so doing, tread the line of stomping the constitution? That'd be great."

I almost wonder if this was a sneaky democrat trying to trick Bush into something suicidally dumb, but then i remember how many people really, actually are like this. -k]

President and Mrs. Bush's Remarks at Ask President Bush Event with Small Business Owners