] The debate that a handful of Texas multi-millionnaires
] close to the Bush family have cleverly manufactured over
] John Kerry's war record is absurd in every way. The
] charges that they have put some vets up to making against
] Kerry are false and can be demonstrated by the historical
] record to be false. Most of those making the charges have
] even flip-flopped, contradicting themselves. Or they
] weren't eyewitnesses and are just lying.
]
]
] But to address the substance of this Big Lie is to risk
] falling into its logic. The true absurdity of the entire
] situation is easily appreciated when we consider that
] George W. Bush never showed any bravery at all at any
] point in his life. He has never lived in a war zone. If
] some of John Kerry's wounds were superficial, Bush
] received no wounds. (And, a piece of shrapnel in the
] forearm that caused only a minor wound would have killed
] had it hit an eye and gone into the brain; the shrapnel
] being in your body demonstrates you were in mortal danger
] and didn't absent yourself from it. That is the logic of
] the medal). Kerry saved a man's life while under fire.
] Bush did no such thing.
]
]
] What was Bush doing with his youth? He was drinking. He
] was drinking like a fish, every night, into the wee
] hours. For decades. He gave no service to anyone, risked
] nothing, and did not even slack off efficiently.

[ There's more... Juan Cole pretty well lets lose here... -k]

Informed Comment : 08/01/2004 - 08/31/2004

] Scientists in the US have developed a novel technique to
] make bulk quantities of glass from alumina for the first
] time. Anatoly Rosenflanz and colleagues at 3M in
] Minnesota used a "flame-spray" technique to alloy alumina
] (aluminium oxide) with rare-earth metal oxides to produce
] strong glass with good optical properties. The method
] avoids many of the problems encountered in conventional
] glass forming and could, say the team, be extended to
] other oxides (A Rosenflanz et al. 2004 Nature 430 761).

[ Cool... -k]

PhysicsWeb - Glass breakthrough

] 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

Useful color palette brainstorming for you webmaster types.

[ This is awesome. Very very useful. -k]

ColorMatch Remix

] 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