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New security glitch found in Diebold system California, Pennsylvania and Iowa are issuing emergency notices to local elections officials, generally telling them to "sequester" their Diebold touch screens and reprogram them with "trusted" software issued by the state capital. Then elections officials are to keep the machines sealed with tamper-resistant tape until Election Day.
comment posted at 5:50 AM on May-11-06
comment posted at 5:51 AM on May-11-06
comment posted at 6:05 AM on May-11-06
comment posted at 6:18 AM on May-11-06

At last the contents of last week's private letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to George Bush have been revealed.
comment posted at 5:13 PM on May-10-06

"The mind-set that invites a couple to use contraception is an anti-child mind-set," she told me. "So when a baby is conceived accidentally, the couple already have this negative attitude toward the child. Therefore seeking an abortion is a natural outcome. We oppose all forms of contraception." Don't even mention the mind-set behind a vaccine for HPV.
comment posted at 9:14 AM on May-10-06

Fred Phelps' daughter (direct link to wmv) appeared on Hannity and Colmes to justify her church's protests at the funerals of American soldiers. Rather than using the show to have a discussion, Hannity and Colmes only berate her and keep her from finishing her sentences. Regardless of how cruel her church's actions are to the families of dead soldiers, it's interesting to see how the anchors steer her away from the issue of homosexuality, especially considering how vocal they've been on that subject.
comment posted at 1:47 PM on May-5-06

Colbert Roasts Bush Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3. Sure he's done it before but this time it is to his face at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. Long but oh so worth it, just to see Bush squirm!
How Steven Colbert can walk with a set of balls that big is beyond me.
comment posted at 10:31 AM on May-2-06

Shelley is a Republican.
comment posted at 6:50 AM on May-2-06
comment posted at 6:56 AM on May-2-06
comment posted at 8:04 AM on May-2-06

Is George really planning to nuke Iran? Some physicists are worried and have written a letter to the president voicing their concerns. Others have gone one step further and made a flash animation.
comment posted at 8:16 AM on Apr-28-06

Two years after the Abu Ghraib scandal, new research shows that abuse of detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan, and at Guantánamo Bay has been widespread, and that the United States has taken only limited steps to investigate and punish implicated personnel. A briefing paper issued today, 'By the Numbers,' presents findings of the Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project... the first comprehensive accounting of credible allegations of torture and abuse in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. The project has collected hundreds of allegations of detainee abuse and torture occurring since late 2001 – allegations implicating more than 600 U.S. military and civilian personnel and involving more than 460 detainees.

U.S.: More Than 600 Implicated in Detainee Abuse

See also Projected Iraq War Costs Soar, See also The Trillion Dolllar War.
comment posted at 12:50 PM on Apr-27-06

Introducing Nintendo Wii The revolution is officially the Nintendo Wii: pronounced "we", as in 'to urinate'. If only we weren't coming to the end of april.
comment posted at 11:00 AM on Apr-27-06
comment posted at 11:02 AM on Apr-27-06

The Ninth Circuit (maligned by many as a hotbed of extreme liberal judicial activism, but defended by others PDF) issued its opinion in the case of Harper v. Poway Unified School District last week. Judge Stephen Reinhardt - who, to some people, embodies the alleged evils of the Ninth Circuit - issued the majority opinion, and Judge Alex Kozinski filed a strong dissent. The majority opinion held that a high school principal who ordered a student to remove his T-shirt that said "Homosexuality is Shameful" did not violate the student's First Amendment rights, reasoning that "limitations on speech" are permissible in cases where speech is "derogatory and injurious remarks directed at students' minority status such as race religion and sexual orientation," and the limitation is "narrow, and applied with sensitivity and for reasons that are consistent with the fundamental First Amendment mandate." [more inside]
comment posted at 9:14 AM on Apr-26-06

Let me tell you what we're gonna do. We're gonna put them handcuffs in front of ya. Cut you a little slack. But if you don't start operating, we're gonna put the mother fuckers behind your back, and I'm gonna take this slapjack and I'm gonna start working that head over, you understand? ...you sign this son of a bitch, or I'm gonna hit you again. Audio. .pdf transcript. Full Story.
comment posted at 7:17 AM on Apr-26-06

Del Mar Community College in Corpus Christi has blocked all access to MySpace because it was 40% of all Internet usage. (Don't those students know about downloading bootleg MP3s?)
comment posted at 8:04 AM on Apr-25-06

"Ça va faire une maudite poutine."
comment posted at 9:34 AM on Apr-24-06

The Campaign Gore Can't Lose. Al Gore makes the case for global warming. (Trailer) Even the hard-bitten conservatives at the National Review are impressed. Can Al Gore lead the way to a new environmental majority?
comment posted at 1:11 PM on Apr-19-06

Well, this settles everything: Kirk Cameron debunks evolution.
comment posted at 12:34 PM on Apr-18-06
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comment posted at 1:13 PM on Apr-18-06

Equidistant Eats lets you find restaurants that are centrally located to two or three locations. Just enter at least two addresses and click "Submit." Street address, city and state are required. ZIP Code is optional.
comment posted at 8:56 AM on Apr-18-06

Six-String Masterpieces. Dean Guitars invites tattoo artists and musicians to decorate 50 Deans in a tribute to Dimebag Darrell. The results range from popstar kitsch to cronenbergian delight. Via Needled.
comment posted at 9:57 AM on Apr-14-06

Sports Dignity (Or, rather, the lack thereof.) Alas, sometimes our athletes are just too caught up in the moment to realize what they're doing. Sometimes unfortunate things happen. Sometimes they suffer great pain. (Ugh.) ~NSFW~
comment posted at 12:17 PM on Apr-13-06

It's Miller Time for SCIENCE: Survey Says: New Men are Evolving Adults, hate wine and shoes!
comment posted at 8:45 AM on Apr-13-06

I like (S+C) x (B+F)/T = V butts and I cannot lie.
comment posted at 6:58 AM on Apr-13-06

Google Calendar has launched. It is compatible with yahoo, Outlook, and iCal and includes many other features.
comment posted at 6:25 AM on Apr-13-06

Remember when US forces "found the weapons of mass destruction?" That announcement was made by President Bush on May 29, 2003 -- one day after this CIA Intelligence assessment was published. In the weeks following, reports emerged that disputed the CIA's findings. Now, three years later, the Washington Post says that the US Intelligence authorities already had "powerful evidence" that Bush's biological weapons claim was simply untrue.
comment posted at 10:02 AM on Apr-12-06

Advice for weary, wandering Democrats Note to Democrats: "Barack Obama put it exquisitely in his victory speech: "Government can help provide us with the basic tools we need to live out the American dream." Here's a dirty little secret. The Republicans know this. Nothing scares them more than us returning to our simple answers. ..."
comment posted at 7:44 AM on Apr-11-06
comment posted at 10:21 AM on Apr-11-06

The Iran Plans by Seymour Hersh.
comment posted at 10:08 AM on Apr-10-06
comment posted at 10:15 AM on Apr-11-06

Dr. James Burda has a gift. "I learned about my gift three years ago. While driving to a nearby city in order to do shopping my left foot started to hurt. Just for amusement, I made a guess as to the exact bone involved with the pain, told the bone to realign, and the pain went away almost instantly." For $60, you (or your pet) can undergo the same treatment from the comfort of your own home. Bear in mind that The Ohio State Chiropractic Board maintains that Burda is "delusional."
comment posted at 8:58 AM on Apr-7-06
comment posted at 9:56 AM on Apr-7-06

What? From WFMU: "What happens when a man covered in microphones walks into a room covered with speakers? Feedback. Lots of it." (might be NSFW)
comment posted at 9:52 AM on Apr-7-06

Man tells President Bush that he should be ashamed of himself. Bushie has been touring the country talking to the people and the people have been talking back. Today he met with his toughest and most elequent angry citizen, one Mr. Harry Taylor who began with this salvo:

Q: You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you'd like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf. You are --

THE PRESIDENT: I'm not your favorite guy. Go ahead. (Laughter and applause.) Go on, what's your question? (full transcript here)
comment posted at 10:32 AM on Apr-7-06

Jesus walked on the water ice. So sayeth... um... well, this guy at Florida State. Doron Nof has released a paper positing that when Jesus walked on the water in Galilee, he was actually walking on a patch of floating ice. What's interesting about science like this to me is that it both validates and invalidates scripture, since if Jesus was walking on ice... no miracle (although, it's a miracle he didn't slip and fall, har har har). But if Jesus was walking on ice, then at least he historically existed, which is still an open question at least in some quarters. In case you think you recognize Mr. Nof's name, you may be remembering his work explaining that the parting of the Red Sea was totally possible (flash video link).
comment posted at 6:00 AM on Apr-6-06

Massachusetts is about to pass a "nearly" universal health care plan. It's an ambitious and innovative piece of public policy that mixes tax incentives to insure yourself if you can afford it to direct government subsidies to health care insurers to help cover the poor. Businesses will be fined if they are not going to cover their workers. It still does not cover escalating costs or malpractice wildness. And, it still will leave 5% uncovered. Nor, is it the plan specifically endorsed by Physicians for a National Health Plan (who favor a single payer system) or the AMA (who favor much greater reform of insurance providers). Still, it's a start from making us "the only industrialized nation in the world" to not, well you know.....
comment posted at 11:13 AM on Apr-5-06

Mysterious Boom felt throughout Southern California this morning with no explanation. USGS claims there were no quakes, meteorologists claim nothing in the weather could have caused it, military bases are claiming that nothing they were doing would cause such a rumble, and air traffic controllers state that no supersonic flights were taking place in the area (no sonic boom). I was awoken by the shaking and the car alarms that followed. If it's none of the above, just what caused it?
comment posted at 6:13 AM on Apr-5-06

Hard to See Uluru (formerly Ayers' Rock) the "red center of Australia" isn't just as tall as an 85 story building, it's surrounded by hundreds of square miles of nothing. Uluru - It's not just big, it's [insert your tagline here].
comment posted at 1:02 PM on Mar-30-06

The oil in your oatmeal is just a bit of The Oil We Eat.
comment posted at 5:21 AM on Mar-28-06

Neil Gaiman gets cease-and-desisted. In a rather bizarre legal turn of events, Neil Gaiman posted in his journal today that he received a cease-and-desist letter from Mark I. Reichenthal of Branfman & Associates insisting that he remove an "unauthorized" link from tomatoesareevil.com to the official movie website for "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes". (Interestingly enough, Reichenthal evidently has previously been deployed to defend the "... For Dummies" trademark.) Problem is that Neil doesn't own the site; they merely posted a photograph of him with a particularly evil-looking tomato, a tomato which Gaiman is turning into salsa in the hopes of becoming "the Paul Newman of satanic salsas." Neil's reaction: "What an astonishingly small amount of research they must do before firing off these bizarre letters."
comment posted at 5:57 AM on Mar-20-06

Hello, hello, hello, HOW LOW.
comment posted at 10:33 AM on Mar-16-06
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comment posted at 12:01 PM on Mar-16-06

Northwestern engineering professor Arthur R. Butz has over 6,000 signatures denouncing his commendation of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's assertion that the Holocaust is a myth. Rumor has it the university was going to stop hosting faculty sites instead of singling out Butz. His (lousy) university webpage is still up though. Prompted in part by prev discussion here
comment posted at 10:57 AM on Mar-10-06