Succinct analysis
Washington Post: "Nearly five years after Bush introduced the "axis of evil" comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea, administration has reached a crisis point with each." (article)
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Category: News: World
October 10, 2006
February 14, 2006
Valentine's Day roundup
Pulled from The Examiner and elsewhere:
- China Daily/AP: there is "fresh demand from couples who are going under the kinfe to get their noses and even their eyes done as a sign of their love for one another.... 'I suggested it as a way of celebrating our relationship and bringing us closer together with a special kind of bond,' Liu Yan, 24, was quoted as saying of the matching nose jobs for her and her 28-year-old boyfriend."
- Headline from the Onion Radio News: "US Leads World in Pregnancy Test Scores"
- More than one-third of the people on Match.com list eyes as their best feature
- Davis Freeberg left me a link to his TiVo Valentine's Mixer summary in the comments
- GIS data can find you love: MapInfo released some Valentine's demographic summaries, such as "Laredo, home to Miss Texas USA, topped the metropolitan area list as the best place for single men seeking single women, with 89 men per 100 women in the 25 to 34 age group." Odd that no one wants to advertise Sunnyvale as one of the best places for single women to find single men (8th highest male-female ratio in US in 2000). GeoCarta has more of the MapInfo stats.
- Plan a date for your next flight: Airtroductions
- Puppy monorail
- Kazo, a 4-month-old African Lion cub, plays with her new canine friend Cairo, an Italian mastiff puppy, on Friday at the Wild Animal Park in Escondido, Calif. Cairo was adopted by the park after her mother was rescued through Operation Canine Rescue in response to Hurricane Katrina.
Photo credit: Christian Calabria, Associated Press
July 7, 2005
London
I was disoriented this morning when parakkum told me of the attacks in London this morning. I had stayed up late last night finishing Gentlemen's Game, a Greg Rucka novel that starts off with a coordinated attack on the London Underground.
We live in era where the terrible attacks that our fiction writers imagine become reality. I hope that amidst today's attacks the good that we imagine comes to life as well.
I know that several of you reading this have strong ties to London, and my thoughts and feelings go out to you, the ones you care about, and the city you cherish.
January 27, 2005
News photos
I've been collecting some news photos from the past week, thought I'd post them here.
Houses made of snow:
Little boom:
Remembrance:
June 30, 2004
Fodder for Mythbusters?
Might be a little too gross to bust this one, though: Iranian woman 'gives birth to frog'
March 11, 2004
December 14, 2003
November 7, 2003
True Lies
I was a bit confused by all the Prince Charles rumor denials, but Neil Gaiman is right there to clear things for us:
a) the goat was not, in fact, Spanish, but Portuguese, and is currently living safely in a wildlife preserve in East Molesey.
b) The Tango is a dance made famous in Argentina. "Erotic licking" plays no part in the Tango. Neither, of course, do balloons.
c) only a lunatic would apply shoe-polish to a weasel.
d) if the alleged incidents had in fact occurred in broad daylight during a car-boot sale in Harrow then there would be photographs, and quite possibly a plaster cast.
e) by now the "Use by" stamps on the yoghurt would have expired, indicating it as unfit for human consumption.
I would also like to add that any rumors suggesting my involvement are ludicrous, and midgets? Please. They were clearly dwarves.
I think this can help clear up this nascent trend of pre-denying for politicians. The first thing a candidate should do when running for office is to deny all of the rumors about some scandalous incident. If people don't know what you're referring to even better, but if it somehow the unnamed allegation you were deny gets out, and people start saying, for example, that you are a grope-monkey, you have to proceed to step 2, which is to combine your denial with an apology. Here's a pretty good example:
"I know that the people of California can see through this trash politics. Let me tell you something, let me tell you something. A lot of those that you see in the stories is not true, but at the same time, I have to tell you that I always say, that wherever there is smoke, there is fire. That is true. So I want to say to you, yes, that I have behaved badly sometimes. Yes, it is true that I was on rowdy movie sets and I have done things that were not right which I thought then was playful but now I recognize that I have offended people. And to those people that I have offended, I want to say to them I am deeply sorry about that and I apologize because this is not what I'm trying to do." (link)
This was a pretty good denial, though he left a loophole by saying "a lot of those...is not true." He would do even better to give an flat out denial. Then you would have a beautiful catch: Those that accuse you are liars guilty of trash politics. Only those who haven't accused you are telling the truth, and to them you apologize.
"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to."
October 27, 2003
Closer to home
It's one thing to read about stories in the news, it's an entirely different experience when there's a personal connection, even if you're not directly involved. I just found out that a friend's dad had two rockets fly into his hotel room during the al-Rashid hotel attacks. He had the amazing presence of mind to take cover under a bed and escaped with his life and an injured arm, which should recover fully. My thoughts go out to my friend, his dad, and his family, who will be reunited soon.
cus anime is teh s uck - Ah, the rare opportunity to use lj as a means for serious communication.
October 26, 2003
Wolfowitz's hotel attacked
A generator hitch filled with 40 rocket launchers was used to launch an attack on the hotel Wolfowitz was staying in, with half of those rockets managing to hit the hotel.
CNN.com - Attackers target Wolfowitz's Baghdad hotel - Oct. 26, 2003
October 24, 2003
RIP: Concorde
My introduction to the Concorde was in Concorde: Airport '79, which featured a hilariously cheesy drone shaped like a calligraphy pen chasing after the noble plane. I had very little taste in movies then, but I adored that movie. I guess it's appropriate that my only real association with the Concorde is a airline-disaster flick, as the Concorde is finally being decommissioned, a retirement that was sped along by footage of flames shooting from its rear.
- Final Concorde Flight Lands at Heathrow (washingtonpost.com)
October 14, 2003
October 5, 2003
Israel attacks camps on Syria
I'm sure the US is only mad because Isreal got a piece first.
CNN.com - Syria seeks condemnation of Israeli airstrike - Oct. 6, 2003
September 14, 2003
Tibet vs. Beijing
The NYTimes has an interesting article on how China is using immigration to slowly secularize the Tibetan region.
- Beijing Sends In the Masses to Make Tibet More Chinese
September 3, 2003
August 25, 2003
August 20, 2003
Iraq Updates
Iraq is now a hotbed of terrorism. Imagine that?
- U.N. Staff's Immunity From Terror Ends (washingtonpost.com)
- A Mission Imperiled
August 11, 2003
Etc...
- Charles Taylor has finally stepped down: CNN.com - Taylor quits under pressure - Aug. 11, 2003
- HP is expected to announce today that (a) they want to be your digital media hub, (b) from now on Carly will wear black sweaters and ripped blue jeans, and (c) HP commercials will have white backgrounds: H-P's Power Play (TechNews.com)
August 4, 2003
July 23, 2003
July 22, 2003
July 15, 2003
Etc...
- North Korea reprocessing fuel rods: CNN.com - North Korean nuclear claims 'serious,' U.S. official says - Jul. 15, 2003
- Mozilla.org Foundation formed. I don't know if this means this is a validation of AOL's support of open source Mozilla, or if AOL is giving Mozilla.org $2M to go hang itself (Mozilla Foundation Announcement)
- One minor reason why the iMac is more popular than the Vaio W: Sony unveils bigger, badder Vaio W, but there isn't a single mention of it on Sonystyle. In fact, there isn't even a picture of it on the front page of the "Computers and Peripherals" section.
- Wired on Softbank's newest money sinkhole: gigabit Ethernet for the masses
- With Inktomi already crawling all over my site (they seem to use dozens of crawlers, as opposed to Google's three that crawl this site), BBC NEWS | Yahoo pays $1.6bn to add Overture to its arsenal
Update: AOL/Netscape question kinda answered. Yes, AOL is giving Mozilla $2M to go hang itself, but either 10% or all of the Netscape employees have been laid off by AOL.
July 8, 2003
Etc...
- Hasek to Return to Red Wings (washingtonpost.com)
- The Shuttle's 'Smoking Gun' (washingtonpost.com)
- Athlon64 set for Sept. 22 release (CNET News.com)
- Gasp - Britney acknowledges she's not a virgin (cnn.com)
- Thailand's online gamers face curfew
June 24, 2003
Etc...
Gone for four days, some shortbread:
- BBC NEWS | Technology | Graphics format wins freedom
- Supreme Court Gives Partial Support for Affirmative Action (washingtonpost.com)
- Supreme Court upholds CIPA requiring filters for public schools and libraries (washingtonpost.com)
More on Apple's bad marketing statistics:
- Tom Yager: Apple, please don't mess with SPEC
- AMDZone Apple PowerPC G5: IBM's PowerPC 970 Unleashed
- Register: Apple accused of cheating over G5 benchmarks
June 18, 2003
Etc...
- Oracle raises PeopleSoft offer to $6.3B
- Beckham is in fact going to Real Madrid (despite previous denials)
- Linus leaves Transmeta for Open Source Development Lab
- Ace of Diamonds caught
- US Court of Appeals allows detainee names to be kept secret: here and here
- Angola loses a 727 airliner
June 17, 2003
Etc...
Tony Kornheiser has a column on the rise and fall of Washington sports fever (now that Jordan and Jagr will no longer be around).
Also in today's washingtonpost is an article summarizing the confusing details of Jessica Lynch's capture and rescue. In similar news, Lynch's story is also highlight the wonders of media conglomeration: CBS News Defends Its Multi-Pronged Pitch to Lynch.
June 5, 2003
Etc...
Fall of the mighty:
- Two top New York Times execs resign: Executive Editor Howell Raines and Managing Editor Gerald Boyd (staff memo)
- Martha Stewart resigned yesterday after indictment (article)
- Sosa's stock still falling after corked bat incident, though 76 of his bats tested clean (article)
June 1, 2003
Yangtze Dam
A co-worker of mine recently took a trip to the Three Gorges region and came back with pictures of the work there, including plans for the huge dam. One of the interesting photos he had was of a small city that had been relocated higher up the river bank. You could see the old abandoned city below and the new city essentially rising out of it. Soon I guess it will be like Atlantis.
I was reminded of my co-worker's trip after reading this Washington Post article, which makes me scared about the whole affair. Here's a short summary of the scarier points:
- "Officials have been arrested for providing construction companies with shoddy materials"
- "Of the 90 tributaries entering the reservoir, 60 are now considered heavily polluted"
- "Millions of water rats have scampered up the bank... their carcasses will now roll back into the reservoir laden with poison."
- "Each year, the area around Chongqing will dump 350 million cubic meters of wastewater and 400 million cubic meters of industrial waste into the reservoir"
May 27, 2003
Thai King Pursuing Deification
Now all he needs is a earthquake machine and locust breeder: Thai king to receive rain-making patent. 27/05/2003. ABC News Online
(posted for Amanda's benefit)
May 23, 2003
Banknotes for thieves
The European Central Bank is thinking of adding RFID tags to banknotes to protect against forgery (story).
In addition to anti-forgery benefits, think of all the efficiencies the tags will introduce: ATMs won't give out the wrong amount, banks can count stacks of bills faster, thieves can choose their victims more carefully. With RFID crime does pay... efficiently.
May 13, 2003
Etc...
News notes:
- Bombing in Riyadh kills 29+, declared by Powell to be Al Qaeda
- New $20 bills with colored background
- Johannson officially leaving Caps, feels slighted at short ice time in final game
- Beijing declares SARS under control as number of cases in China eclipses 5100
April 28, 2003
Etc...
Vietnam reins in SARS
April 24, 2003
Etc...
SARS travel advisory for Toronto
North Korea admits it has nukes in talks with US
April 16, 2003
Etc...
US, Korea finally beginning talks
Debates over Palestinian terrorist detained in Iraq
- Oslo Peace accord appears to have given him amnesty
- Italy wants him to serve life in prison sentence
- Responsible for hijacking of cruise liner
April 13, 2003
Iraq updates
- 7 US POWs released
April 9, 2003
Iraq updates
This is the "big day" for our hawks. There's looting, celebration, and fighting in the streets of Baghdad. Images of Iraqis beating up toppled Hussein statues are everywhere, and the journalists's minders have disappeared.
April 8, 2003
Etc...
Iraq updates
- Baghdad quiet, majority of Iraqi troops may have deserted
- Looting in Baghdad
New Bin Laden tape
- calls for suicide attacks on US, British interests
April 7, 2003
Iraq updates
- US forces in central Baghdad
- Body of 'Chemical Ali' found
- US performs another "decapitation attack" on possible Saddam location. Bombs location within 12 minutes of go order.
April 4, 2003
Iraq updates
- info minister promises "untraditional" "martyrdom" strikes
- Baghdad airport secured by coalition forces
Saddam walkabout
- shown walking among cheering crowds, oil fire smoke visible
- speech broadcasted (no video?) mentioning downing of Apache helicopter by farmer
April 3, 2003
Iraq updates
- US within 10 miles of Baghdad
- F-18 may have been shot down by Patriot missile
March 29, 2003
Etc...
A-day in Iraq
- "Shock and awe" supposed to happen today
- rapid series of explosions on TV
- supposedly hitting presidential palaces
- US Marines forces to take down US flag, not occupiers
- France announces it will veto any resolution allowing US/Britain to administer post-war reconstruction
- Port of Umm Qasr (Iraq's only outlet to Persian Gulf) under coalition control
- More than 1,000 sorties on Iraq
- 3 American casualties thus far
- Major riots in Cairo
Sonicblue filing for bankruptcy
March 25, 2003
Etc...
Senates votes to slash Bush tax cuts by half
- previously only making room for war costs
Iraq updates
- Uprising in Basra may finally be occurring
March 24, 2003
Etc...
Battle for Baghdad begins
- attacking Republican Guard protecting southern advance in Iraq
Oscars were last night, who cares?
- Chicago wins
- Polanski wins
Etc...
Iraq updates
- US know believes Hussein alive because of second TV appearance
- Some believe that Iraq is creating impression of more dissent than there is
Indiana abducted girl found
- found along highway in Northern California
- Lindsey Ryan, 14
- Amber alert system used up and down California
- white Dodge Dakota repainted black
March 23, 2003
News: Iraq
- Al-Jazeera shows video of capture/killed US soldiers, some shot in head
- Intense fighting around An Nasiriyah
- CNN reports explosion outside US Cent Comm in Qatar, news of this disappears
- Second appearance of Hussein on TV, cites battles in Basra an Umm Qasr
March 22, 2003
Iraq updates
- US soldier may be responsible for grenade attack on own troops
- Patriot missile may have shot down Royal Air Force plane
- Northern campaign stalled due to failed negotiations for base rights in Turkey
- Calvalry half-way to Baghdad
March 20, 2003
Etc...
Iraq updates
- first confirmed US/British deaths: CH-46 Sea Knight crash kill 12
- British secure Faw Peninsula
- US Intelligence sticking to its guns that Hussein was in bombed bunker
- "Shock and awe" strategy clearly a ruse
- US keeps hinting that attack is coming
NCAA tournament starts with little fanfare
Etc...
Operation Iraqi Freedom updates
- Marines cross border into Iraq
- first clashes reported
- Iraqi oil fields on fire
- Turkey opens airspace for US
- More intense air campaign over Baghdad
- uncertainty as to validity of Saddam's appearance on TV
- missiles fired into Kuwait, 2 intercepted by Patriot missiles
Data recorder found for Columbia
- Sean O'Keefe admits that NASA may never know what happened