America is facing its worst summer drought since the Dust Bowl years of the Great Depression. Or perhaps worse still.

From the mountains and desert of the West, now into an eighth consecutive dry year, to the wheat farms of Alabama, where crops are failing because of rainfall levels 12 inches lower than usual, to the vast soupy expanse of Lake Okeechobee in southern Florida, which has become so dry it actually caught fire a couple of weeks ago, a continent is crying out for water.

In the south-east, usually a lush, humid region, it is the driest few months since records began in 1895. California and Nevada, where burgeoning population centres co-exist with an often harsh, barren landscape, have seen less rain over the past year than at any time since 1924. The Sierra Nevada range, which straddles the two states, received only 27 per cent of its usual snowfall in winter, with immediate knock-on effects on water supplies for the populations of Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

But the long-term implications are escaping nobody. Climatologists see a growing volatility in the south-east's weather - today's drought coming close on the heels of devastating hurricanes two to three years ago. In the West, meanwhile, a growing body of scientific evidence suggests a movement towards a state of perpetual drought by the middle of this century. "The 1930s drought lasted less than a decade. This is something that could remain for 100 years," said Richard Seager a climatologist at Columbia University and lead researcher of a report published recently by the government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Be sure to let me know when we need to start running for the hills and or building defensive compounds in the desert.

The wrath of 2007: America's great drought | Independent Online

Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell said yesterday that he would close down the U.S. military prison for enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "this afternoon" because it has become a major problem in "the way the world perceives America."

"Essentially, we have shaken the belief that the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like a military commission," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Making it clear that he "would not let any of those people go," Powell said, "I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our more federal legal system." He said he sees no problem in detainees having the right of habeas corpus and getting their own lawyers. "Isn't that what our system is all about?"

And the crowd cheers...

Powell Calls for Closure of Military Prison at Guantanamo - washingtonpost.com

This is some of the most hilarious gamer humor I've seen in a long time.

YouTube - Hitler's Ultimate Downfall - XBox Live

“The longer you work, the less efficient you are,” said Bob Kustka, the founder of Fusion Factor, a productivity and time-management consulting firm in Norwell, Mass. He says workers are like athletes in that they are most efficient in concentrated bursts. Elite athletes “play a set of tennis, a down of football or an inning of baseball and have a pause in between,” he says. Working energy, like physical energy, “is best used in spurts where we work hard on a few focused activities and then take a brief respite,” he says.

And those respites look an awful lot like wasting time.

Time Wasted? Perhaps It's Well Spent

I want more info. This is quite outrageous if true.

I agree with what terratogen is saying in the thread.

There are contexts when you must separate the function of collecting information, from the commentary aspect inherent in presenting it. This was clearly one of those situations. He wasn't trying to collect information, he was trying to make commentary. It was very two-faced.

What we should be doing, is striving to get the candidates into more situations where they can be confronted. I like to see how they respond to this type of thing. It often says volumes about their character.

However, in situations like this one, there are a metric fuckton of reporters wanting to ask questions. It is necessary to accommodate as many of them as possible. The root cause of this guy getting kicked out was that he was obstructing that process. I don't think "ambush" is a good tactic.

Reporters often have to ask questions many different ways, at many different times, in order to get real answers. That's part of the challenge. The other part, is being able to present what you get the way you want it. Be it as objectively as possible, or embedded with commentary, bias, or a certain world view.

We can make many well grounded arguments that the public discourse is broken.. Regardless of that, the concept is still fundamentally broken that people who have grievances can voice them by obstructing the ability of the entity they have grievances with to share their message.

Large press conference situations are chaotic logistical nightmares. They are very far from ideal for any kind of real dialog. However, we are stuck with that framework for a large number of things. The approach taken by this guy doesn't achieve anything, except maybe a dancing session in front of his own choir.

This hurts their changes of getting any real dialog with a candidate, because it makes them look like complete asshats to anyone who could/would get them access. It also hurts the chances of other new online media entities from getting access to these type of conferences. They had a chance, and they blew it for many more people then just themselves.

"unprofessional" conduct leads to less access to people who don't quality as professionals. Using tactics like this causes the divide between the mainstream professional media and new online user-generated media to grow wider and harder to traverse.

Asshats asking 'tough questions' of canidates press staff

xkcd is awesome.

The Electromagnetic Spectrum, as seen by Randall Munroe

Several thousand Turkish troops crossed into northern Iraq early Wednesday to chase Kurdish guerrillas who attack Turkey from bases there, two Turkish security officials said. Turkey's foreign minister denied its troops had entered Iraq.

Two senior security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, characterized the action as a "hot pursuit" raid that was limited in scope. They told The Associated Press it did not constitute the kind of large incursion that Turkish leaders have been discussing in recent weeks as Turkish troops built up their force along the border.

One official said the troops went less than two miles inside Iraq and were still there in late afternoon. "It is a hot pursuit, not an incursion," one official said.

Another official said by telephone it was "not a major offensive and the number of troops is not in the tens of thousands." He also said the Turkish troops went into a remote, mountainous area.

The officials are based in southeast Turkey, where the military has been battling separatist Kurdish rebels since they took up arms in 1984.

The officials stood by their statement despite denials from Turkish and Iraqi officials.

Turkey's private NTV television quoted Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as saying reports of a cross-border operation were false.

"There is no such thing, no entry to another country. If such a thing happens, then we would announce it," Gul said. "We are in a war with terror, we will do whatever is necessary to fight terrorism."

Turkish CI operations in 'hot pursuit' of Kurdish sepratists

We feel that the best documentaries are made by individuals not companies. That’s why we’ve created a home where the independent documentary filmmaker is always welcome.

We uniquely tap into the vast pool of documentaries that have been previously unviewed by the public. The Channel strives for the highest quality and seeks to air the personal works of the most talented documentary filmmakers.

We will show docs that are rare, edgy, personal, difficult in terms of subject matter, and "un-commercial".

I want this channel.

The Documentary Channel

Of course, the music industry can exist only if free is a rare exception. But when free, concerts should be also free of peripheral promotion; at Town Hall, you didn't even see Lifschitz's compact discs sold in the lobby. Everyday life is full of promotional swindles, spam assaults, and advertisement-driven Malware. Art hasn't necessarily stayed clear of that. But here, it can - and does.

Free music? Priceless.

Google searches - will be performed by mind control.

That's an interesting statement...

Brain-reading technology is improving rapidly. Last year, Sony (Charts) took out a patent on a game system that beams data directly into the mind without implants. It uses a pulsed ultrasonic signal that induces sensory experiences such as smells, sounds and images.

I hope it doesn't upload a rootkit...

Controlling devices with the mind is just the beginning. Next, Wolf believes, is what he calls "network-enabled telepathy" - instant thought transfer. In other words, your thoughts will flow from your brain over the network right into someone else's brain. If you think instant messaging is addictive, just wait for instant thinking.

Imagine what this will do for the world of spam.

The only issue, Wolf says, is making sure it's consensual; that's a problem likely to tax the minds of security experts.

[ insert joke about popular science-fiction in the hacking scene here ]

Future Boy: This is your brain on Google - Jul. 21, 2006