After having Mexican food for lunch and pizza for dinner yesterday, I am painfully familiar with this word.

2:05:38 PM     leave/read comments []

Buy a drink for Big Brother while you're at it.

Visitors to an art exhibit at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts got more than their martinis when they ordered drinks at a bar inside the gallery's entrance. Instead of pretzels and peanuts, they were handed a receipt containing the personal data found on their license, plus all the information that could be gleaned from commercial data-mining services and voter registration databases like Aristotle. Some patrons also got receipts listing their phone number, income range, marital status, housing value and profession. For added effect, the receipt included a little map showing the location of their residence.

So much for privacy.

5:41:21 PM     leave/read comments []

Once again, the Wizard of Whimsy hits a home run.

3:39:57 PM     leave/read comments []

But, but, but.....

Tenet Concedes Gaps in C.I.A. Data on Iraq Weapons. The director of central intelligence said that U.S. spy agencies may have overestimated Iraq's illicit weapons capacities. By Douglas Jehl. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

12:17:26 AM     leave/read comments []

LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!

Run! Run! Run!

Link props to Austin

Can't get through to the original link? I mirrored it.

11:33:29 PM     leave/read comments []

Hey folks! Valentine's Day is coming and as Greg T knows- It Makes A Great Gift!

Only available at :

5:14:27 PM     leave/read comments []

1918 killer flu secrets revealed. Scientists have worked out how the virus which caused the world's ever worst flu epidemic infected man. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

The most deadly disease ever has given up a few of its secrets to researchers. However, it doesn't provide many clues on how to deal with the "chicken flu" currently loose in East Asia.

They believe the virus, which claimed the lives of 50m people around the world, jumped from birds to humans.

....But the National Institute for Medical Research team warns viruses cannot be stopped from crossing between species.

They also say their work is unlikely to aid the current fight against avian flu in the Far East as knowing the structure of a virus is not enough to block its progress.

4:57:27 PM    

Thoughtful writing from Spatula here.

Lastly, unelected President George W Bush is said to be considering throwing his support behind a US Constitutional amendment that would prevent gays from every marrying in any state or even achieving benefits similar to marriage (no civil unions, domestic partnerships, etc.). This is President George W. "States Rights" Bush, by the way. It's worth noting that the conservative Massachusetts Supreme Court made its decision without really considering the US Constitution; their decision was based primarily on the Massachusetts state Constitution. That makes their decision one that states have the right to make. It's a states' rights issue. True to form, Bush is showing that he supports states' rights just as long as the state is doing what he wants them to do; as soon as a state makes a decision he doesn't agree with, it's time for the federal government to make a blanket decision for all states. This is a similar tactic to one used by conservative activist courts; they're happy to throw out bad laws all session long, but when it comes time to throw out a bad law with which they personally agree, suddenly they feel it's up to the state legislature to throw the law out and that the judiciary shouldn't step in. This is roughly the position conservative activist judge Clarence Thomas shamefully took in the Lawrence v Texas case. Because he thinks gays are icky, he said it's up to the legislature to throw out the law, but he's joined no shortage of majority opinions throwing out other bad laws. Hypocrisy of this nature should astonish anyone.

But then, hypocrisy is what the Bush administration is all about. Well, that and lies, lies, lies.

1:32:22 PM     leave/read comments []

Recovery? What recovery?

11:42:30 AM     leave/read comments []

They also reported several new "Serious Bummer Elements" and one "Righteously Tripping Element."

1:18:04 PM     leave/read comments []

Dog rape attempt goes astray

It's pretty bad when you can't find yourself a hooker in Thailand.

A THAI man was mauled when he drunkenly tried to rape a dog which fiercely resisted his advances, news reports said yesterday.

Police in Samut Prakan province, on Bangkok's southeastern fringes, told the Thai Rath newspaper that Toryip Rawang, 33, had been drinking heavily with friends before Monday's incident.

....

He told police he noticed a brown female stray dog wagging its tail and "acting sexy" and pulled it into some tall grass by the roadside.

....

He told police he always became aroused when he drank heavily but did not have enough money to pay a prostitute.

Police said Toryip had been given a rabies shot and was not charged with a crime, but he had fled his home in an apparent effort to avoid public ridicule.

Sadly, he was not quoted as saying, "Bitch MADE me do it!"

1:09:02 PM     leave/read comments []

Soldiers tell it like it is.

"Wow, 130,000 troops on the ground, nearly 500 deaths and over a billion dollars a day, but they caught a guy living in a hole. Am I supposed to be dazzled?"-Anonymous Army Specialist

"At the beginning, it was very clear: get that maniac out of power, get him and his regime gone, and everything else would take care of itself. We reached that goal, and continued past that goal, and we've lost track of what we're doing. You can't leave, but you can't win. ... All they're doing now is getting people killed. ... There's not going to be any end in sight. It only takes a handful of people to hit a place, move on, and hit another place. It was effective in Vietnam, and it's effective here."-Sgt 1st Class John Bogle, 101st Airborne

There's more. Lots more.

Link props to Pinoy Ka Ba?, who graciously links to here.

12:46:49 PM     leave/read comments []

Something to think about on election day.

12:25:13 PM     leave/read comments []

How the imaging teams assemble the photos we see is amazing- especially at 12 bits per pixel.

When the rover takes a picture, it stores it in either its Ram or flash memory. The image is put into binary code, allowing it to be sent back to Earth as a data packet during a communication session.

These communication sessions are conducted three or four times a day, either through "direct-to-Earth" links using the rover's high-gain antenna, or via the two US probes in orbit around the planet: Mars Odyssey and Mars Global Surveyor.

This sounds especially cool:

One of the most exciting prospects for the future is a possible collaboration between the European Space Agency and Nasa to combine image data from Mars Express, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and the two rovers to produce a seamless 3D "journey" around Spirit and Opportunity's landing sites.

11:15:04 AM    

Bob hangs out on the "chillin' couch" here at Scooter Sound Studio.

10:40:56 AM     leave/read comments []

For the first time ever, two life-essential elements have been detected in a planet outside our solar system. There's just one problem; its atmosphere is being blown away.

Scientists have for the first time detected carbon and oxygen in the atmosphere of a planet beyond our solar system. What is more, the planet's atmosphere is evaporating rapidly, prompting researchers to propose that it represents a unique category of extrasolar planet.

"What's key here is that we have detected oxygen and carbon in atomic form and in the outermost layers of the planet where we would not normally expect them," says study co-author Gilda Ballester of the University of Arizona. "These species are 10 times heavier than hydrogen atoms, so a force stronger than gravity is driving them up along with the hydrogen gas into the very extended envelope around the planet."

So, like a toddler that got into your bowl of chili while you weren't looking, this planet sort of goes around in a cloud of its own gas.

And to think, NASA wants wants to give up on the Hubble.

12:06:41 AM     leave/read comments []

Justin knows he's not gonna do any better.

11:51:45 PM     leave/read comments []

The NYT's mash note to Steve Jobs.

4:59:30 PM     leave/read comments []

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An outraged Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites) Chairman Michael Powell (news) on Monday ordered an investigation into the broadcast of the Super Bowl's halftime entertainment show, during which singer Janet Jackson (news)'s right breast was exposed.

"Also," Powell was not quoted as saying, "if you're busy watching us smack down tittie, you won't notice us screwing you up da butt."

The tittie in question:

UPDATE: click on comments to see a close-up of the boob in question- reader submitted photo, source unknown

12:32:41 PM     leave/read comments []

Via Adam

11:05:59 AM     leave/read comments []

Be sure to check out the newest addition to my list of links, Junk Culture, my pal Raleigh Roule's most excellent blog.

Be there or be, well, square.

7:43:24 PM     leave/read comments []

Man, when a company makes Micro$oft look good, that's bad.

Car Talk dumps Real for WMP. The guys who run Car Talk on NPR have dumped RealMedia in favor of Windows Media Player, having gotten fed up with Real's deceptive practices that try to force you into downloading the payware version of their player.

Here's the problem. In order to hear our audio, you have to go to Real.com and download their "free" RealPlayer. But when you get to the web site, the free player is harder to find than Osama Bin Laden at night. And the site seems to do everything it possibly can to get you to "buy" a player instead. You have to work very hard to get the free player. And we think that stinks. And get this. It stinks so much that it even makes Microsoft look good by comparison. That's something, huh?

Link

(via /.) [Boing Boing Blog]

As for the relative quiet here today- a foot of snow combined with Ye Olde Superbowl makes for very little blogging time.

7:27:53 PM     leave/read comments []