If you’ve been watching the World Cup, setting your alarm for 2:30 in the morning and dragging yourself out of bed to watch Andreas Cantor scream at you in Spanish on Univision, you’ve seen a lot of questionable refereeing. Probably the most often-miscalled play is offsides, in which the linesman always seems to err for the defense.

There have been other game-changing calls, though. Probably the first was in the first round of games in the group stage, in which Turkey was robbed of a tie and a... [More]

Rhetoric Distorts Realities… by Robert Jensen on Common Dreams takes Bush to task on recent statements he’s made, many of which contradict the facts of history. Whether they do so through ignorance (which is inexcusable in a leader with that much power) or through deception is still at issue. The truth about U.S. history would certainly not serve the administration (the current one or any recent one, for that matter) well.

Ignoring the truth lets Bush say, “Targeting innocent civilians for... [More]”

Ben Cohen has published Enemy Wanted on AlterNet which talks about more government obfuscation, this time with a specific example involving the U.S. military. The Pentagon’s budget next year is expected to top $400 Billion. The money is being spent solely to fund defense contracting companies. All of the hardware provided can’t possibly help in the war on terrorism. Seriously, why does the U.S. need more submarines?

“Even Lawrence Korb, a top defense official under Ronald Reagan, says we’re... [More]”

The Onion has the latest from venerable columnist Jim Anchower: a rant about movies called What the Hell is Wrong with Movies These Days?. His review of Star Wars is particularly scathing and hilarious:

“I saw the new Star Wars movie, and even that blew. I mean, yeah, there were some great space scenes, and you get to watch Yoda fight with a light saber, but as soon as the weed wore off, the whole thing just dragged. The love story was totally sappy, and there were all these long, boring scenes... [More]”

SatireWire just published Arabs Slyly Building Wall Around Israel in response to a Yahoo News article Israel Begins Work on West Bank Fence. Yahoo claims the Israeli efforts are “aimed at protecting Israelis from Palestinian suicide bombers”, but SatireWire claims that they are “unwittingly footing the bill to construct the first stage of an 800-mile-long wall meant to seal off the entire state of Israel from everyone else.”

Go read the SatireWire article for the full story.

Worth 1000, a website that holds Photoshop contests, has a good one called Best Friends. It’s a contest to come up with the best picture showing Arafat and Sharon as “best friends”.

The New York Newsday published a letter to the editor today in response to an article by Robert Jensen, published on May 29, 2002, called Journalism Should Never Yield to ‘Patriotism’ (reprinted here at Common Dreams). The letter is excerpted below:

“To be an American is the height of being a human being. This does not mean we are better than other people, it does not mean we have no humility. It means that we have led the way. Through our economic system, we have shown others how to live free... [More]”

The New York Newsday today had a headline on their front page which noted “Bush Expands Order To Topple Hussein”. On pages 2 and 3, the article Bush: Get Saddam… had more details of a planned U.S. coup attempt. Under that article was another, In Congress, Support for the President, which dispelled any notions that this coup attempt was just the unsanctioned idea of the President and his administration, bent on revenge.

So, here we have a very blatant example of the complicity of the U.S. media... [More]

Kath and Marco’s car, ‘Fritz’, now has his very own earthli Album, called Fritz, strangely enough. So far, there are just basic outside pictures, but after a good washing and cleaning, more interior pictures should be available.
 

The Southwest 2002 Journal from the Van Evera family trip to Arizona (and Las Vegas) is available, but hasn’t been proofread or edited yet (just entered by mvonballmo).

The Register has published Dubya calls for US Gestapo, covering Bush’s speech late last week. He called for a new cabinet-level position to be created, effectively legitimizing the Office of Homeland Security. “The stated purpose here is to provide a second layer of insurance against the intelligence and communications failures affecting both the CIA and FBI, which Congress is now investigating.” But, the proposal calls for the CIA and FBI to create reports of information and hand it over to the... [More]

The White House has issued a new set of 6 posters created to help Americans through this trying time.

“Attention American Citizens! You stand hereby directed to prove your patriotism by printing out hundreds of the wartime morale posters below, and distributing them widely throughout your community!”

Anyone not joining in will be determined to be an “Arabiac”, as described in John Ashscroft’s latest press release, Attorney general ashcroft announces new hospitality measures for arabiac immigrants... [More]

Motion Playground has a Ski Stunt Simulator on their Games page. There’s a Java version that you can play online, trying out the ‘kicker jump’, ‘the wall’, ‘crash and burn’, ‘practice’. ‘Practice’ is good for just trying flips:

front flip

lean back and down, then move forward quickly; the mouse should make a horizontal line to the right, then back to center

back flip

lean forward and down and then move back and up quickly; the mouse should make a counter-clockwise C-shape

Those are my... [More]

Someone put a lot of time and effort into creating this map of Springfield (from the Simpsons). It took me a while, but I finally found Moe’s and the Kwik-E-Mart.

The original was found at CrapHound.

The caption is a bit small, but it reads:

<q>Thomas Martello, 6, whose dad died at the World Trade Center, manages a smile as President Bush takes yet another crack at spelling his own name correctly.</q>

This guy is from another place altogether…

John Carmack Interview on Voodoo Extreme

U.S. Is Icing Our Warming Report from the New York Newsday talks about a recent report issued by the U.S. federal government about its stance on global warming, the Climate Action Report 2002. In it, the U.S. government finally admits “what every other important institution in the world has long insisted: that global warming will wreak massive damage on every corner of the planet.”

However, the logic of the U.S. empire being what it is, this does not lead to a call for curtailing of activity... [More]

Do you miss Myst? Try out this groovy game Kharon4a with a DNA theme, available in English and Norwegian. It’s got a cool soundtrack.

The big news from E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) is the first official showing of Doom III. The video they are showing there is available for download includes in-game/engine footage and interviews with members of id, along with a history of Doom. The in-game footage is amazing and pretty photo-realistic. The models breathe, roar and move in unbelievable detail.

The first scene is a monster pawing around a dead zombie in a bathroom. It drools, the zombie is batted around realistically, a... [More]

Doom III will depart from standard id games in another important way. There are plans for a plot. The game engine’s amazing sound and video capabilities (see Doom Technology) allows the artists and designers to create a terrifying atmosphere and focus on the environment’s role in the game, rather than using many monsters (Doom) or other players (Quake III) to create fear. GameSpy has a full article, DOOM III: The Very First Look, with more details.

Watching the video (see Doom III E3 videos),... [More]

Doom III is going to be ground-breaking in many different ways. First of all, it doesn’t seem that it will attempt to replicate the super-fast gameplay style of the original Doom. In There’s no ignoring Doom III on MSNBC, John Carmack says “If you … have everybody running around at 100 miles an hour, you would lose the immersion.” It will be “about the fear, the scary, extraordinary, unknown environment and not knowing what can happen.”

There are many departures for id from their standard... [More]

If you’ve ever watched Conan O’Brien, then perhaps you’ve seen Triumph, a hand puppet of a cigar-smoking dog. He’s often hilarious, but I’ve never seen him better than in Triumph at Star Wars (available from ShizNitt). It’s a ten-minute WMV (Windows Media Player movie) file and shows him interviewing, insulting and sadly mocking the “nerds and geeks” that come out to stand in line for Star Wars movies.

If the link above doesn’t work, then try to download from a local copy I made here [Triumph... [More]

FIFA World Cup News is reporting that Rivaldo fined for fake injury, which occurred (or didn’t, in fact) during Brazil’s match against Turkey. Apparently, the fine was assessed in lieu of an outright ban from the tournament, as FIFA is admanant about preventing fakery from dominating soccer. From the looks of some matches, this is almost definitely a losing battle, as there has been quite a bit of excess flailing and extreme acrobatics again this year.

“Rivaldo admitted after the match that he... [More]”

earthli Projects is functional enough to move the site changelogs into the automated format. The Albums, News, Recipes and Webcore logs have been imported.

Democracy − Who is she when she’s at home? on ZNet by Arundhati Roy from April 28 is a long article about recent racist riots in India’s state of Gujarat between Hindus and Muslims. Ever since “Muslim ‘terrorists’ who burned alive 58 Hindu passengers on the Sabarmati Express in Godhra…”, though no claim to the terror has been laid or evidence shown, Muslims have been persecuted in the Gujarat.

“Officially the number of dead is 800. Independent reports put the figure at well over 2,000. More... [More]”

I received this through email and thought it was a nice demonstration of the Powers of 10. If you’ve been to the Hayden Planetarium in New York City, this will be familiar to you, but it doesn’t go quite as far as that one does. This Java applet lets you navigate from 1023, “10 million light years from the Milky Way Galaxy” to 10-15, “face to face with a proton”. Be patient, sometimes it takes a few seconds to load the next frame once you click an arrow.

Real Madrid won the European Champion’s Cup for the ninth time on Wednesday, on a goal from Zinedine Zidane that was simply amazing. Goal.com (UK version) has Zidane wonder-strike clinches Real´s ninth European Cup, which has the best coverage I could find.

“Roberto Carlos sent a speculative looping cross into the area and the French international midfielder showed wonderful balance and composure to lash an unstoppable volley into the top corner.”

I didn’t find a video, but this is pretty... [More]

earthli Albums has been upgraded to the latest WebCore code and benefits from fixes and improvements made to the code shared with Recipes and News. earthli can now offer text-searching in the Albums; you can look for pictures or journal entries, searching in the title or the description or both.

USA Patriot Registration on the White House lets you sign up for Ashcroft’s new program. Register now to make sure you’re in the clear.

Just recently, I had the pleasure of hearing a discussion laced with mystification at the rest of the world’s displeasure with the wonderful United States. These opinions are espoused in an information vacuum lovingly prepared by U.S. media and a will to believe. I was able to offer that “they hate us for our freedoms”, which was swallowed whole and agreed with enthusiastically. There is no individual effort to determine whether there may be reason behind the mystifying dissatisfaction with the... [More]