Tom Turnipseed writes A Creeping Collapse in Credibility… for CounterPunch about the Bush administration’s entanglements in oil policy. Dick Cheney is especially suspect, since:

<q> … [He] was then CEO of Haliburton Corporation, a pipeline services vendor based in Texas. Gushed Cheney in 1998, “I can’t think of a time when we’ve had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It’s almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight. The good Lord... [More]

Mark Morford writes Supersizing Your Afterlife about the death of Wendy’s founder, Dave Thomas.

<q>Because isn’t it funny in a sad and ironic sort of way how we as a culture wouldn’t care much to openly weep over the diligent and hard-working (and long- dead) founders of say, Philip Morris or Dow Chemical, but when it’s a gentle old fatherly type who’s on TV all the time espousing tasty foodstuffs that just so happen to inflict millions and kill thousands and it’s all couched in homespun... [More]

Oz has added over 30 new (old) pictures to his Autobiography album. There are a lot of pictures from his early years.

There are over 130 new pictures in Kath & Marco’s Switzerland 2001 album. There are albums for Pilatus, San Bernardino, Ermes’ Family Trip, Werner & Ekhlas’ House and the 1st of August.

MNFTIU is back with 4 more pages of getting your war on. The link is to page 3, but pages 4-6 are available at the top of the page. On page 4, you’ll find such gems as:

<q>Man! I like a good stiff Operation Enduring Freedom as much as the next guy, but I’ve reached my limits of understanding! All of a sudden my fucking mailman is a Hero on the Front Lines in the War Against Terror? My daughter wants to sell cookies to help the people my nephew’s been sent to fucking bomb? I’m supposed to help... [More]

Common Dreams published New Turbine Can Extract Energy from Flowing Water. Alexander Gorlov, who worked on the Aswan Dam in Egypt is currently testing the new design that could provide a cheaper, less invasive form of hydro-power than that provided by dams.

<q> … Gorlov’s turbines have other advantages, proponents say: When they generate electricity, you can’t see them, you can’t hear them, and they’re virtually disruption-free.</q>
 

Have you ever seen those ASCII pictures that look like they took forever to create? There’s a tool called MosASCII that makes it easy to construct them in HTML, in full color.

I made the earthli globe into ASCII art. It’s easy.

In other ASCII art news, The Register reports in Ever wanted to see Star Wars in Telnet? that a “whacked Dutch hardware geek” called Sten has converted Star Wars into 13,935 frames of Telnet action. As the title of the article suggests, you simply must check it out if... [More]

Security Focus ran a longish article called Lamo’s Adventures in WorldCom about a lone 20 year old hacker who finds holes in corporate web sites not by hacking, but just by looking for them. He has no home and often spends all night in a Kinko’s with his old laptop jacked into a free connection. He doesn’t take advantage of the information he finds and, once he’s finished, usually turns it over to the company he ransacked, along with a map of all of the holes in their Net.

Bruce Sterling, a science fiction writer, gave an interesting talk recently about the state of cryptography today. He talks about what we all thought the net would be like today and how it’s ended up where it is. Where did all of that ‘geeks’ will rule the world stuff go? Well, he says:

“So where are these imaginary earthshaking geek outlaws who laugh in derision at mere government? Well, they do exist, and they’re in Redmond. The big time in modern outlaw geekdom is definitely Microsoft. ... [More]”

For those who’ve ever struggled to determine what pixels per inch actually means when applied to the real world, the thread DPI: TRUTH OR LIE? at TalkGraphics provides many answers.

The basic gist is that when you store a graphic in Photoshop, it asks for the Pixels per Inch for the graphic. If this graphic will never be printed or does not need to retain its crispness when printed, this number does not matter at all. With an increasing amount of content created exclusively for the web, the... [More]

The most complete history of UseNet, an enormous news archive has been resurrected and indexed at Google Groups. The announcement mentions the historical aspects of this archive:

<q>We are compiling some especially memorable articles and threads in the timeline below. For example, read Tim Berners-Lee’s announcement of what became the World Wide Web or Linus Torvalds’ post about his “pet project”.</q>

In case you thought the U.S. would be too busy fighting the war on terror to continue the war on drugs, think again. The war on drugs was fought all through the war on communism, after all. The Bush administration (U.S.) recently appointed a new drug czar to take on the responsibilities of the war on drugs. The choice of John Walters indicates no end in sight for treating drug use as a moral issue and treating it with punishment. Mother Jones published America’s Lonely Drug War on Dec 14, 2001,... [More]

Mo’ Money

ArabNews reports that at the end of November, the US Congress helps itself to hefty raise.

“Congress does have a history of being generous to itself: In 1975, the annual congressional salary was $44,600. In 1990, it was $97,500. As of January 2002, that salary will jump to $157,105. Simply put, their salary has increased 48 percent in the last decade, and increased 13 percent since 1999, according to the Congress Disbursing Office?s Quarterly Report.”

I presume that’s for the bang-up... [More]

So Osama is nowhere to be found in the Tora Bora area that the U.S. bombed for a month. Maybe they should just arrest the guy they used in the video (pictures here and here. Careful, the rhetoric is pretty thick on both pages. :-)

The bombing and low-grade ground support seems to be working so well, but there are always other options, other weapons and strategems to bring into play. However, the attack on Afghanistan went so well that there was talk of using the same playbook in a future... [More]

No, this isn’t that lame ASCII snowball you’d wish people would stop sending you in your email. You know, the same people that call you up to apologize for sending you yet another email virus. This is a cool snowball fight game in Flash.

I haven’t gotten past level 3, but my version cheats, I think.

The White House issued another alert today: Terrorists Lurking in Life-sized Manger Tableaus!. The problem lies with the large manger scenes commonly put on by churches in small towns in the U.S.

<q>As you will note, nearly every such nativity display has folks that look just like that terrorist we’re after, that evil un-Christian bin Laden fellow. And if we see somebody who looks like a terrorist, we’re taking the fucker down.</q>

The problem is real and seems to be suppressed in major... [More]

The latest issue of AdBusters published What Could Have Been − The Speech that was Never Made. It’s a fake speech that could also have been delivered by our nation in response to the September 11th attack. Common Dreams published A Letter from America, an interview between America and a foreign policy therapist, who responds:

<q>Yes, there are some among your current enemies who can no longer be reached by reason. Yes, there are some who are crazy. But most are not. Most people are not insane.... [More]

Curious about how quickly the U.S. attacked Afghanistan? Wonder why a non-military solution wasn’t even considered? Apparently, an attack has been contemplated as far back as March 2001 (as reported on Janes in India joins anti-Taliban coalition). In June Indiareacts.com reported that action was already taking place:

<q> … the anti-Taliban move followed a meeting between US Secretary of State Collin Powel and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and later between Powell and Indian foreign... [More]

earthli Forums are now searchable. You can search all forums or just within a particular forum. There’s even fancy keyword highlighting (which carries over to the post as well).

Slashdot is reporting a newly discovered security hole in Internet Explorer in Another Gaping Microsoft Security Hole Goes Unpatched.

Basically, it’s possible to create a link that will cause explorer to issue a download dialog asking whether you want to save the file or open it. The link would claim that the file was a text file or a PDF file, for example, leading you to possibly click to open it. However, once you tell IE to open it, it uses a different set of standards that would notice... [More]

If anyone’s wondering why they can’t find me on Google+ anymore, it’s because recent changes led to my YouTube account no longer functioning as I wanted it to.

Essentially, my situation was like this:

• I have an ancient YouTube account associated with my only gmail address
• Until recently, this YouTube account was not associated with Google+
• A while back, I created a Google+ account for the same gmail address
• Until recently, this Google+ account was not associated with YouTube

Several months... [More]

Incriminating Video Tape

The New York Newsday reports in Tape Erases Doubt that the U.S. Government has another video which really proves that Osama (Usama) did it.

“Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed the tape’s existence, saying it provides clear proof that bin Laden was behind the attacks … Senior Bush administration officials are debating whether to release the 40-minute videotape, which The Washington Post reported was discovered during a search of a private home in Jalalabad,... [More]”

While U.S. newspapers report Israel’s renewed “war on terror”, Democracy Now! reports that Switzerland opened an investigation into whether Israel is violating the Geneva conventions.

<q> … The meeting of nations that have signed the 1949 treaties on the conduct of war is expected to conclude that Israel is breaching the accords, and to call on Israel to respect the agreement on the treatment of civilians in occupied territory and allow independent observers to monitor the situation in the... [More]

Lars Petrus, the Swedish national speed-cubing champion, has a nice website on solving the Rubik’s Cube like a pro. There are a lot of Java animations that you can rotate with your mouse and play to show how each step of his method is done. His method involves solving the cube, not layers of the cube:

<q>Most people solve the cube layer by layer. This is a simple way for the human mind to approach the problem, but it is useless for speed cubing. No matter how good you are, you will use more... [More]

There’s a great site about propaganda with step-by-step examples and small experiments to help you start approaching information with a healthy amount of skepticism. In order to be objective, you should have the same amount of skepticism for, and requirements for proof for all sources, regardless of whether you agree with the information or not. However, simply doubting everything you hear, regardless of facts, is also wrong (not to mention lazy).

I highly recommend this site because it spells... [More]

The Segway motored into America’s heart this week. It’s a people-mover that runs on electricity. Ars Technica has a good summary in IT revealed (IT was a former code name for the device).

Everything Isn’t Under Control published a pretty funny “Diary of the First Segway Owner”. It’s the post from 12:17AM on December 4, 2001 (about 2/3 of the way down the page).

This news is somewhat old, but several people I’ve talked to recently had never heard of it, so I’ve collected the unfolding(ed) story. On November 20, 2001, MSNBC reported that FBI software cracks encryption wall. The title is misleading, since the FBI hasn’t cracked any encryption schemes. The article deals with the ‘Magic Lantern’, which is the FBI’s cutesy name for a computer virus they wrote that installs key-logging software onto a suspect’s computer.

Key-logging software runs in the... [More]

The earthli Christmas theme has arrived. It’s not as ostentatious (or musical) as some have requested, but hopefully it’s ready early enough for those who get into the spirit early. It isn’t the default yet (earthli does not get into the spirit early), but you can choose it from the list.

earthli Themes now have their own screenshots, making it even easier to choose how you want to browse the web…and, yes, a Christmas theme is coming.

The Register writes that initial reports of a bizarre Japanese video game are most likely not a hoax. The game is called Boon-Ga Boon-Ga. From the product brochure:

<q>Select from 8 characters to spank. When you spank the character that you chose, the cards will be shuffled. After detecting your power with a sensor, a card will come out. It will explain your sexual behavior.</q>

It has to be seen to be believed.

If you want to know what ‘Boon-Ga Boon-Ga’ means, you’d best ask a construction... [More]