He believes an overzealous pursuit of terrorists in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States is partly to blame, but said only a full public inquiry in Canada can reveal what happened.

That has to suck.

Canadian deported to Syria by United States details torture, calls for public inquiry

]] A small group of Westside High School students plastered
]] the school Monday with posters advocating that a white
]] student from South Africa receive the "Distinguished
]] African American Student Award" next year.
]
]WTF is this? It seems that Blacks professing they are "African ]American" is prefectly ok, but for a white guy to profess his ]nationality, it is "inappropriate and insensitive." What kind of ]bullshit double standard is that? If anything he is more ]African-American they any of these people: He was born in African, ]he lives in America. How many of these other students running for ]African-American Student of the year can say that?

more than anything, this exposes the problem with the term "african american". In a literal, semantic sense, this kid was probably the only truly african person in the school, but lets be honest, that's not what they meant. the award was designed to recognise a black student in honor of MLK's efforts for civil rights. it has nothing to do with africa, and this kid, or his family, should've recognized that. This boys campain may have been innocent, but it wasn't very smart. Somehow a stigma got attached to the term "black", which i understand, and am sensitive to, but "african-american" has it's own set of problems, as this case proves.

Anyway, i'm not sure suspensions were necessary, but I certainly don't think would make sense for this kid to win an honor that was really not designed for him, and only made sense because someone didn't completely think out the consequences of a particular P.C. term. People love to smugly exploit semantic inconsistencies and loopholes like this, but it's not gonna work very often. At best, it'll spur debate about how to refine the definitions we use.

You are not African-American, You are White

] This collection of web pages documents Brad's activity on
] the system and the people who's lives he effected, from
] the first day he logged on MemeStreams to the day he
] passed on.

Brad

Very pointless...yet somehow compelling.

virtual bubble wrap

Rattle's comments:

For several months now, work has been underway building the next version of MemeStreams. It has been necessary to recode most of the site from scratch, so its taking awhile. At any given time the trials of life, lack of funding, bad timing, hardware failure, and general bad luck is screwing up the works. However, we _are_ making progress.

Just before the new year, I hit the point in the development process where new capabilities of mining and graphing social network data were becoming available. I decided to go off on a little tangent, embrace the milestone, and do something to show our technology's progress. The result is the Year in Graphs 2003. Over the course of putting this together I've wound up fixing all kinds of problems with our database conversion code and wrote much of what will become the new graphing engine. I even had a really good "eureka" moment in relation to some of our network theory.. Its been time usefully spent.

That being said, this is all very kludgy. I did not spend that much time crossing I's and dotting T's.. The fonts in the nodes are hard to read, some of the graphs look "squished", its missing the "Show Links" feature the current Social Network portion of the sites has, etc.. There is much room for improvement with our graphing. I look forward to additional feedback.. :)

While these graphs may be fun to look at, the data they are built with is what's really exciting.. The same thing that allowed me to make these graphs is what's going to lead to improvements in the capabilities of the Reputation Agent.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy browsing through this review of the past year!

MemeStreams - The Year in Graphs 2003

I can't beleive they're actually going through with this. It'll look cool anyway.

27 Live Action Weta Workshop Produced Designs For EVANGELION

Japan is a country filled with ramen fans, ramen connoisseurs, and certifiable ramen maniacs, and now the city of Yokohama has opened an entire museum devoted to the ubiquitous Chinese noodle. More than just an ordinary museum, it's also part historical theme park and part hyper-specialized restaurant mall. And, unlike your usual dusty museum, it stays open till 11pm to accommodate hungry concertgoers returning from the nearby Yokohama Arena.

Fun for everyone who has, at some point, lived off of Ramen.

Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum

Here's a reason to accept that cat as your SAVlOR!!!!

Accept Jesus and receive a PS2!!!!!

does entertaining things, although not very useful in any way.

googlism

It is with an extraordinarily heavy heart that I post that my good friend, Brad Blines, died on Thursday morning of a heroin overdose. Folks on memestreams will know him as crankymessiah. People from the 'scene' in Nashville will remember him from the days of Dragon Park, countless concerts and shows, and Predators games.

Brad was one of the lights of my life. We shared the same giddy excitement over music, film, and creativity that few people can understand. We had that kind of brotherly relationship where you don't really have to say anything to hear the other person. I hope that I will be able to still hear his infectious laugh in my head for the rest of my life.

Goodbye my friend.

Brad Michael BLINES
Nashville, TN
Age 35
January 8, 2003
January 8, 2003. Survived by parents, Michael and Diana Blines; sister, Kristin (Richard) Vik; grandmothers, Bonnie (Lloyd) Holt, Ruth Allen; nephews, Ethan Richard Vik, Brennan Michael Vik. The funeral service will be held at 3 p.m. at Harpeth Hills Funeral Home with Bro. Doug Varnado officiating. Pallbearers will be Chris Scheele, Richard Vik, Michael Dodson, Rich Husband, Jim Folger, Ernie Simon. The Interment will follow at Harpeth Hills Memory Gardens. In lieu of flowers donations may be made to the New Life Lodge. Visitation will be Friday 5-9 p.m. and Saturday 1 p.m. until service at HARPETH HILLS FUNERAL HOME, 9090 Hwy. 100, 615-646-9292

I am sad, and unhappy...