While within group revenge episodes are unusual, tribal members cannot always prevent someone who is so angry they inflict revenge on an in-law, brother or cousin, but taking that revenge is outside the rules. On the intermediate level, the value of ritualized revenge, seems to be that any group that is not willing to retaliate blood for blood finds its resources, land and homes plundered, women carried off and men bullied.

Posted by GeeTee at February 28, 2003 05:30 PM | TrackBack 0

We have a coalition still, a good one. The loyalty of many of our friends is impressive, a tribute to American moral capital built up over a century. But our closest allies are persuaded less that war is justified than that it would be perilous to allow the U.S. to drift into complete solipsism. Loyalty should be reciprocal. Why does our President condone the swaggering and contemptuous approach to our friends and allies this Administration is fostering, including among its most senior officials. Has "oderint dum metuant" really become our motto?

Posted by GeeTee at February 28, 2003 05:22 PM | TrackBack 0

Perhaps it is in this strict adherence to custom that Zambians and other Africans make themselves particularly vulnerable to the virus. Let me tell you about three of those customs. The last will make you wince.

Posted by GeeTee at February 28, 2003 04:16 PM | TrackBack 0

"If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease," says Watson, now president of the Cold Spring Harbour Laboratory, New York. "The lower 10 per cent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what's the cause of it? A lot of people would like to say, 'Well, poverty, things like that.' It probably isn't. So I'd like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 per cent."

Posted by GeeTee at February 28, 2003 03:27 PM | TrackBack 0

This nighttime view of the British capital offers unique insight into the city's urban density and infrastructure as highlighted by electrical lighting.

Posted by GeeTee at February 28, 2003 02:59 PM | TrackBack 0

"It completely stops them dead, preventing any further growth and killing the existing bacteria."

Posted by GeeTee at February 28, 2003 09:05 AM | TrackBack 0

The left-wing wheel well is of intense interest because telemetry from that part of the shuttle showed abnormal temperature increases and sensor failures just minutes before Columbia broke apart on 1 February.

Posted by GeeTee at February 28, 2003 09:03 AM | TrackBack 0

In his lawsuit, Spillane claims that he submitted about 250 defect reports during his tenure at VoteHere, where he was hired in January 2001 to test voting applications to ensure they were in compliance with Federal Election Commission guidelines and industry standards.

Posted by GeeTee at February 28, 2003 06:08 AM | TrackBack 0

Saddam Hussein's mouthpiece, the newspaper Babel, which is run by his son, Uday, has praised the demonstrators for inflicting "humiliating international isolation" on Britain and the United States and for ushering in "a new chapter in the global balance of power." Seeing that his enemies are divided, Hussein has continued to not fully cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors. In his defiant interview with Dan Rather, he even sneered at the United Nation's demand that he destroy his Al-Samoud 2 missiles.

Posted by GeeTee at February 28, 2003 06:05 AM | TrackBack 0

"A few people came out and crowded me with their bodies and one person shoved me away from the penis," she said.

Posted by GeeTee at February 28, 2003 05:38 AM | TrackBack 0

On Iraq, the support for invading that country seemed to hinge on several factors. One example: Forty percent of those polled said they would support an invasion of Iraq with U.S. forces only if the United Nations approves another U.S. resolution against Iraq. And support for an invasion drops significantly if Saddam destroys missiles cited by U.N. weapons inspectors, falling from 71 percent to 33 percent.

Posted by GeeTee at February 28, 2003 05:35 AM | TrackBack 0

A chronology of Bush saying one thing then doing another

Posted by GeeTee at February 28, 2003 05:15 AM | TrackBack 0

The researchers found the queen that was more closely related to the workers was more likely to get better treatment from her brood .

Posted by GeeTee at February 28, 2003 04:52 AM | TrackBack 0

A Web site promising to revive the Ottawa Journal, a daily newspaper that folded more than two decades ago, is raising eyebrows in media circles.

Posted by GeeTee at February 28, 2003 04:48 AM | TrackBack 0

Posted by GeeTee at February 27, 2003 07:51 PM | TrackBack 0

It's perfectly possible, of course, to use Mobile Video for more controversial purposes like surreptitious viewing. Certain people will probably see Mobile Video as an ideal babysitter-cam, for example. In fact, it's not ideal - it is soundless and sends only snapshots every few seconds. And the Logitech Webcam itself isn't exactly unobtrusive; it looks like a giant robotic eyeball on a stick. Still, the Mobile Video concept may well become Exhibit 14,207 in the rapidly heating national debate on privacy versus security.

Posted by GeeTee at February 27, 2003 04:50 PM | TrackBack 0

I first realised that the right wing was attempting to penetrate the mainstream environment movement when I sat on a panel at an environmental meeting in the University of Oregon in 1994. Beside me was a professor and environmentalist, Virginia Abernethy of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee. She seemed to me to blame immigrants for overpopulating our country and destroying our environment. Some of the audience liked her ideas but I thought they were racist.

Posted by GeeTee at February 27, 2003 04:20 PM | TrackBack 0

At a porn site in California, an employee is fired after his employer discovers he's spent too much time on eBay and not enough doing his job, which, ironically, consists of looking at porn.

Posted by GeeTee at February 27, 2003 04:05 PM | TrackBack 0

He says Germans will be allowed in if their country joins a war on Iraq, but the French will have to endure a lifetime ban.

Posted by GeeTee at February 27, 2003 04:04 PM | TrackBack 0

Will you vigorously demand an international tribunal to indict Hussein's regime for crimes against humanity? Or will you simply dismiss him as "another" dictator of a "sovereign" country?

Posted by GeeTee at February 27, 2003 04:03 PM | TrackBack 0

In case you had not guessed, Ulysses' four sisters are named England, New Zealand, Finland and Switzerland. And they are offering him full support.

Posted by GeeTee at February 27, 2003 03:54 PM | TrackBack 0

Visitors to iSoNews.com on Wednesday saw a notice saying: "The domain and Web site were surrendered to U.S. law enforcement pursuant to a federal prosecution and felony plea agreement for conspiracy to violate criminal copyright laws."

Posted by GeeTee at February 27, 2003 08:04 AM | TrackBack 0

Described as the first "Virtual March" on Washington, anti-war protestors from around the country deluged the Senate and White House with a coordinated barrage of phone calls, faxes and e-mails.

Posted by GeeTee at February 26, 2003 06:51 PM | TrackBack 0

MoveOn.org, founded in 1998 to protest the Clinton impeachment, urged people to present a united front against the war by contacting the Senate and White House to lodge their opposition to an attack. By late Wednesday afternoon, more than 140,000 people had participated in the protest, and more than 400,000 messages had been sent via fax, phone or e-mail. An interactive, pop-up map on the site displayed comments from people across the country protesting the possible war.

Posted by GeeTee at February 26, 2003 05:15 PM | TrackBack 0

"If on your campus you had an assault and battery or a murder, you'd go down to the district attorney's office and deal with it that way," said Rep. William Jenkins, R-Tenn.

Posted by GeeTee at February 26, 2003 04:24 PM | TrackBack 0

"My comments do not reflect my personal opinion of the American people and they certainly do not reflect the views of the government of Canada."

Posted by GeeTee at February 26, 2003 03:54 PM | TrackBack 0

"They feed off fresh blood, not dead tissue as other species do. That's why they are extremely dangerous. It's very hard for an animal to defend itself against something like that," said Alfredo Alvarez, a biologist at the plant.

Posted by GeeTee at February 26, 2003 03:49 PM | TrackBack 0

Here one can see a graph of the brachistochrone for the given endpoint.

Posted by GeeTee at February 26, 2003 03:00 PM | TrackBack 0

My predecessor as literary editor in this paper, A.N. Wilson, told a remarkable story in a book of essays called Secrets of the Press. He had rung the historian Paul Johnson to ask him to review a big book - more than 800 pages - on the American Civil War. To give Johnson more time, Wilson asked his assistant to have it biked over that same day. The next morning, she admitted she had forgotten to send it and that it was still sitting on her desk.
At that moment, "the fax machine had begun to whirr into action, and 800 perfectly formed words on the American Civil War, with observant comments on the merits and faults of the book, had dropped into the intray. I saw no reason not to publish this review", says Wilson. "Like all really good journalists, Paul had somehow intuited the true nature of the thing under discussion."

Posted by GeeTee at February 26, 2003 11:10 AM | TrackBack 0

In a lecture to the American Council of Learned Societies in 1994, Mr. Merton said that thanks to the libraries, schools, orchestras to which he had access, and even to the youth gang he had joined, his early years had prepared him well for what he called a life of learning. "My fellow sociologists will have noticed," he said, "how that seemingly deprived South Philadelphia slum was providing a youngster with every sort of capital -- social capital, cultural capital, human capital, and above all, what we may call public capital -- that is, with every sort of capital except the personally financial." It is not difficult to see connections between such views and Mr. Merton's insights into the causes of anomie.

Posted by GeeTee at February 26, 2003 10:58 AM | TrackBack 0

Mr. Madja and Sali have been blamed for the October 2 bombing that killed the US soldier, and are close associates of Abu Sayyaf leader Khaddafy Janjalani. The same cellphone also called Hussein on October 3, Filipino officials say. "This isn't a smoking gun, but the links to Abu Sayyaf members are bad enough,'' says a Filipino intelligence official. "Given the past behavior of Iraqi intelligence here, it seems likely they're seeking to franchise out attacks to local groups in the event of war."

Posted by GeeTee at February 26, 2003 10:40 AM | TrackBack 0

After a 16-hour bus ride from Virginia with his wife and seven children, he arrived at the Canadian border, hoping to take advantage of Canada's political asylum law.
But besieged Canadian officials told him to come back in two weeks. And when he dragged their suitcases back to the American side, United States immigration agents promptly arrested him and his two teenage sons, leaving the rest of the family wailing in despair in the icy cold.

Posted by GeeTee at February 26, 2003 10:36 AM | TrackBack 0

While the rest of the country eagerly anticipates war with Iraq, one lucky soul will reap the benefits right away. That's right, we're giving away free gasoline to the winner of our Baghdad Bonanza Betting pool. So fire up the S.U.V. - it won't be long now!

Posted by GeeTee at February 26, 2003 10:22 AM | TrackBack 0

"Once the input, software, and hardware molecules are mixed in a solution it operates to completion without intervention," said David Hawksett, the science judge at Guinness World Records. "If you want to present the output to the naked eye, human manipulation is needed."

Posted by GeeTee at February 26, 2003 10:18 AM | TrackBack 0

"When the Iraqis enhance their position with unauthorized weapon systems, it triggers a response from us," Franks said.

Posted by GeeTee at February 26, 2003 09:50 AM | TrackBack 0

"We will die here. We will die in this country and we will maintain our honor - the honor that is required ... in front of our people," Saddam said according to excerpts of the interview posted on the network's Web site Tuesday. CBS said the comments would air Wednesday on "60 Minutes II."

Posted by GeeTee at February 26, 2003 09:47 AM | TrackBack 0

I'm supposed to be working right now, but
nothing is more appealing than writing a poem
when one should be doing something else.

Posted by GeeTee at February 25, 2003 07:09 PM | TrackBack 0

A shell of ice many kilometres thick encases the surface of Europa and scientists speculate that liquid water - and therefore life - might lie beneath. Evidence for the presence of the molecular building blocks for life comes from the yellow-brown stains seen on the ice by the Galileo probe.

Posted by GeeTee at February 25, 2003 10:12 AM | TrackBack 0

In an exclusive interview with CBS News Anchor Dan Rather, Saddam Hussein denied his al-Samoud missiles were in violation of U.N. mandates and indicated he will resist demands that he destroy them. He also challenged President Bush to a live broadcast debate on the looming war.

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 09:33 PM | TrackBack 0

Taken away from their homes, across an international border, left with no other means of support, the victims of sex traffickers are kept as virtual prisoners and frequently physically abused.

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 09:32 PM | TrackBack 0

Naomi Klein is a celebrity. The author of the bestseller, "No Logo", is a pied piper to a generation of anti-globalisation protesters. In that book, she argued that corporate brandlords exploit the world's poor to provide the products rich westerners have been trained to crave. She married Veblen's views of conspicuous consumption to Marx's analysis of capitalist exploitation, thereby connecting the dissatisfaction of the spoiled children of the west to the ills of global inequality, corporate power and environmental degradation. The argument was arrogant, paranoid and wrong. But it was also an intellectual coup.

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 07:18 PM | TrackBack 0

Conversations with victims' families about these motions are not easy for prosecutors, said Joshua Marquis, co-chairman of the National District Attorneys Association's capital litigation committee. "Every prosecutor dreads making a phone call to a victim after the victim thinks the case is over," Mr. Marquis said. "You're reopening the wound."

"To make sure we are clear on this," Judge Michael A. Wolff of the Supreme Court replied, "if we find in a particular case that DNA evidence absolutely excludes somebody as the murderer, then we must execute them anyway if we can't find an underlying constitutional violation at their trial?"

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 04:04 PM | TrackBack 0

What would therapy look like if repression came back into vogue? Here's Dusty Miller. She lives and works in Northampton, Mass. She's well into her 50's, with blue eyes and moccasins. Her office is small and spartan. On the wall there is a picture of Audre Lorde and the words ''When I dare to be powerful -- to use my strength in the service of my vision -- than it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.'' Miller knows this to be true.

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 02:48 PM | TrackBack 0

This week, however, Berman said he may not revive the measure. For one thing, copyright holders may not need extra protection to combat file-sharing piracy, he said. And though Berman wasn't deterred by complaints from consumer advocates, the concerns voiced by Hollywood studios -- among the biggest beneficiaries of the bill, given their active anti-piracy efforts online -- suggested that Berman was climbing out on a limb by himself.

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 02:42 PM | TrackBack 0

The Senate report also provides some fascinating insight into marijuana consumption in Canada -- and the failure of current laws to curb it. The committee estimates that about three million Canadians, ages 14 to 65, smoked pot at least once during the previous 12 months, and pegs the costs of trying to enforce Canada's pot laws at $300 million annually. Yet only 20,000 people are arrested on cannabis possession charges each year. How many more billions of dollars, ask the senators, would it cost to truly enforce the law? And couldn't that money be better spent targeting the illicit trade in more dangerous drugs such as heroin and cocaine and funding overall drug use prevention and treatment programs?

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 02:38 PM | TrackBack 0

That's not bad money, but it's split four ways, or $40,477.25 each, about the same as a city sanitation worker with two years' experience, without health benefits, vacation and retirement fund. But with, of course, groupies.

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 12:43 PM | TrackBack 0

The controversy stemming from ACPA cases do not stop with the technodome.com decision. In a case that will be the subject of an appeal to be heard later this week, the City of Barcelona sued the long-time owner of the Barcelona.com domain name by invoking the ACPA. The U.S. court asserted jurisdiction over the dispute despite the fact that the city did not hold a U.S. trademark in the name Barcelona. Rather, the court concluded that the ACPA could be applied equally to foreign trademarks.

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 12:41 PM | TrackBack 0

To test his hunch, Pashley removed almost all the gas from a water-oil mixture by repeatedly freezing and thawing it while pumping off the gases as they evaporated out (Journal of Physical Chemistry B, vol 107, p 1714).
What he saw then was completely unexpected. "The mix spontaneously formed a cloudy emulsion. I was as surprised as anybody," says Pashley. The result suggests that dissolved gas may be involved in how the force acts.

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 11:54 AM | TrackBack 0

"Because of Cubbie's support for our troops, we no longer serve french fries. We now serve freedom fries," says a sign in the restaurant's window.

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 11:49 AM | TrackBack 0

I do have a high personal opinion about most if not all the current and past Directors. But, like it or not, probably the clearest truth about ICANN is that the Board does not work as it should. There are many reasons for that, and none amounts to any "conspiracy" whatsoever, but this is the reality: the Board discusses too little, too often it's done too late, most of the times on topics that have nothing to do with DNS or any other "core topic", and relate instead to "structure" and "process"; at the end of the day, we approve whatever comes from the staff (twhere all of the "intellectual processes" take place, as we all know).

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 11:24 AM | TrackBack 0

A bow hunt could offer a quiet, unobtrusive and safe way to thin the deer population, McKenzie says, but public resistance and a city bylaw banning the discharge of firearms or bows, even in rural areas of the city, present major roadblocks.

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 11:05 AM | TrackBack 0

This site aims to be the primary Internet resource for any and all references to the aforementioned quote.

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 11:04 AM | TrackBack 0

Although there are no guarantees that Dutch legislation at some point in time might impose restrictions on file sharing services that operate from the Netherlands, there are now great business opportunities. The Netherlands has a very hospitable climate for businesses plus we have a history of setting liberal precedents in various fields. Based on our Dutch standards it is fair to assume that the Netherlands will remain one of the preferred, if not the best country, to operate your file sharing service from. The Netherlands is viewed as the gateway to Europe. For Internet file sharing services, the Netherlands might very well prove to be the gateway to the world.

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 11:00 AM | TrackBack 0

I tell Burrows that if he is willing to submit to an interview, I am willing to review his book at length in The Washington Post. The only catch, I said, is that I am going to say that it is, in my professional judgment, the worst novel ever published in the English language.
Silence.
"My review will reach 2 million people," I said.
"Okay," he said.

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 08:18 AM | TrackBack 0

Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution and a staff member of the National Security Council during the Nixon administration, said there has been a natural progression in attitudes overseas. "It was antiwar, not anti-American. Now it's anti-Bush, not anti-American," he said. "That image is stuck in people's consciousness."

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 07:48 AM | TrackBack 0

After receiving an anonymous call of an "inappropriate snow figure," Lynn was told by a Kent police officer to remove the breast of the snow woman or face possible disorderly conduct charges. Lynn decided to cover the breast of her snow woman with a cloth, a decision that satisfied the police officer.

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 07:35 AM | TrackBack 0

Sony has today announced its first foray into the compact prosumer market since the excellent DSC-S85. The DSC-V1 is designed to battle against Canon's hugely popular PowerShot G3, Nikon's Coolpix 4500 and Olympus's C-5050 Zoom. The DSC-V1 has a five megapixel sensor and a four times 'Carl Zeiss' zoom lens. It has all the major manual controls you would expect, as well as various shared enhancements including MPEG VX (VGA, 16 fps), USB 2.0, color saturation / tone adjustment, Smart Zoom and MS Pro support. All this plus a flash hot-shoe, metallic case and it measures just 99 x 65 x 57 mm (3.9 x 2.6 x 2.2 in) - about the same size (from the front) as Canon's PowerShot S330 (Digital IXUS 330).

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 07:31 AM | TrackBack 0

The reason I love The Simpsons? Not just the hilarity, not just the even-handed way they skewer everybody. What gets me is that alone of all the shows in the history of television, let alone animated programs, they've managed to present both an amazing amount of sexual habits and preferences, and a married couple who have never strayed. Homer and Marge have both been tempted in their time together, but their love is more than a match for such petty delights. It's inspiring, it is, and it's good to know that a balding fat man can elicit such joy in his bride. God knows Homer needs to be good at something...

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 07:19 AM | TrackBack 0

Turns out that nearly half -- 46 percent to be precise -- of the duct tape sold in this country is manufactured by a company in Avon, Ohio. And the founder of that company, that would be Jack Kahl, gave how much to the Republican National Committee and other GOP committees in the 2000 election cycle? Would that be more than $100,000?

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 06:07 AM | TrackBack 0

Bush and White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer went out of their way Thursday to cite a new survey by "Blue-Chip economists" that the economy would grow 3.3 percent this year if the president's tax cut proposal becomes law.
That was news to the editor who assembles the economic forecast. "I don't know what he was citing," said Randell E. Moore, editor of the monthly Blue Chip Economic Forecast, a newsletter that surveys 53 of the nation's top economists each month.

Posted by GeeTee at February 24, 2003 06:02 AM | TrackBack 0

The protests had no single identified leader and no central headquarters. Social theorists have a name for these types of decentralized networks: heterarchies. In contrast to hierarchies, with top-down structures, heterarchies are made up of previously isolated groups that can connect to one another and coordinate.

Posted by GeeTee at February 23, 2003 07:04 PM | TrackBack 0

I kept calling and pretending I just had jaw surgery and mumbling gibberish. At first I had no info except the screen name, then I called and got the first name and last name by saying, 'Could you repeat what I just said?' Then each time that I got information I called back making the real information understandable, and everything else I just mumbled.

Posted by GeeTee at February 23, 2003 06:53 PM | TrackBack 0

Some have always disputed whether the "no-fly" zones have UN authority, but now the US and Britain have widened the "rules of engagement" to the point where warplanes are effectively preparing the way for an imminent invasion.

Posted by GeeTee at February 23, 2003 06:10 PM | TrackBack 0

The stray cats have been slinking through the ruins since they were first excavated and their protectors believe they are descendants of felines who stalked Roman temples in the time of Julius Caesar more than 2,000 years ago.

Posted by GeeTee at February 23, 2003 03:42 PM | TrackBack 0

...hackers have compromised security at AOL to such a degree that the personal information of all 35 million subscribers may be compromised. That's definitely a feat to put on the next commercials for AOL 9.0. Hackers have gained access to Merlin (AOL's customer database application) despite the fact that the system requires a user ID, two passwords, and a specialized ID code to gain access.

Posted by GeeTee at February 23, 2003 03:40 PM | TrackBack 0

In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, Neil MacGregor said the sculptures, which once adorned the Parthenon temple in Athens, should remain in London. He has also ended discussions with a British campaign group seeking their return to Greece.

Posted by GeeTee at February 23, 2003 02:42 PM | TrackBack 0

How can I let the introvert in my life know that I support him and respect his choice? First, recognize that it's not a choice. It's not a lifestyle. It's an orientation.
Second, when you see an introvert lost in thought, don't say "What's the matter?" or "Are you all right?"
Third, don't say anything else, either.

Posted by GeeTee at February 23, 2003 11:20 AM | TrackBack 0

Lynda Brine, a teacher from a Doncaster comprehensive who recently attended a training day for the course, says in today%uFFD5s Times Educational Supplement that she was primed to deal with detailed questions about oral and anal sex. "I was amazed. Are these really the sort of questions to which we as a profession should be responding?" she writes.

Posted by GeeTee at February 23, 2003 08:29 AM | TrackBack 0

A "riot" among economists might not call for crowd control, but the paper does evoke strong reactions. UCLA%uFFD5s Klein says the paper is "unrealistic modeling with little to do with the real world." In a paper with Kevin Murphy of the University of Chicago and Andres Lerner of Economic Analysis LLC, Klein writes that Boldrin and Levine%uFFD5s model works only under the "arbitrary demand assumption" that demand for copies is elastic, so that as price falls over time output increases more than proportionately and profit rises. In the case of Napster and the music industry, this "clearly conflicts with record company pricing. That is, if Boldrin and Levine were correct, why are record companies not pricing CDs as low as possible?"

Posted by GeeTee at February 23, 2003 08:27 AM | TrackBack 0

"They deceive you into thinking a movie starts on time in order to create a captive audience,'' Weinberg said. "People are actually paying good money to watch commercials.''

Posted by GeeTee at February 23, 2003 07:28 AM | TrackBack 0

Don't get me wrong, eating this would be acceptable for certain types of people. I guess football players could get away with it. Plus, if you're already 400 pounds with no foreseeable future as a human being who doesn't resemble a monster truck, you may as well throw caution to the wind and chow down. Fill your bowl full of jelly with a tray full of dead animals and chicken miscarriages. But for people who can safely walk on the second floor? You may wanna stick to the Pop Tarts.

Posted by GeeTee at February 23, 2003 07:19 AM | TrackBack 0

Bertelsmann, the complaint argues, prolonged the life of online song-swapping service Napster by investing more than $100m into it, the suit said.

Posted by GeeTee at February 23, 2003 07:12 AM | TrackBack 0

Why not surprise your partner by renewing your vows if you're already married. Get engaged in the day and have your reception in the evening. We can cater to all your needs in our gold silver and bronze packages. Now we can bring the church to the bride rather than the other way around. It can be set up anywhere, from your garden to Malibu beach, it's up to you. No problem with "high heels" our church has a hard floor. But please NO SMOKING !!

Posted by GeeTee at February 23, 2003 04:29 AM | TrackBack 0

The TUC urged the government to research the effects of stress, long hours and bullying.

Posted by GeeTee at February 19, 2003 09:34 PM | TrackBack 0

Ernst called me today from Canada at noon, very briefly, and told me that he was in Canada and had asked for political asylum. He asked me to call some friends to bring him some money since he was not allowed to have anything with him when he was arrested, and I was not allowed to see him while he was in detension here, except once, as you all know.

Posted by GeeTee at February 19, 2003 07:21 PM | TrackBack 0

Based on the idea that the trailer is usually better than the movie, TRAILERVISION.COM, features trailers for fictional movies that don’t exist. The show has been called "blindingly fun", "the movie event of the minute" and "the next step in cinematic evolution."

Posted by GeeTee at February 19, 2003 03:49 PM | TrackBack 0

Most of my friends on The March could not place Iraq on a map, let alone describe the contents of Resolution 1441, which finds that "Iraq has been and remains in material breach of its obligations" and imposes a deadline "not later than 30 days from the date of this resolution" for Iraq to supply "a currently accurate, full, and complete declaration" -- a date which fell on December 9. Tell them this, and they say that it's critical to stick by the UN, without being able to grasp the contradiction.

Posted by GeeTee at February 19, 2003 02:53 PM | TrackBack 0

Threats by Republicans to cut the General Accounting Office (GAO) budget influenced its decision to abandon a lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney, The Hill has learned.

Posted by GeeTee at February 19, 2003 02:49 PM | TrackBack 0

the ultimate in self-expression, it is a design experiment that puts you on paper in as little structure as possible. it is all about how you can use the line as representation of yourself. the limits that only using 5 lines imposes on your portrait causes you to do one of two things: either think long and hard and plan out your portrait, or not think at all and just let the portrait happen. the latter method usually produces the best portraits.

Posted by GeeTee at February 19, 2003 02:46 PM | TrackBack 0

The Bush folks are big on attitude, weak on strategy and terrible at diplomacy. I covered the first gulf war, in 1990-91. What I remember most are the seven trips I took with Secretary of State James A. Baker III around the world to watch him build -- face-to-face -- the coalition and public support for that war, before a shot was fired. Going to someone else's country is a sign you respect his opinion. This Bush team has done no such hands-on spade work. Its members think diplomacy is a phone call.

Posted by GeeTee at February 19, 2003 02:43 PM | TrackBack 0

In this study, early tobacco and alcohol use were also significant predictors of drug problems. Undoubtedly, most people use these legal substances before cannabis because they're more available. But the possibility that these legal drugs are the gateway never appears in the study.
Worse, anyone who used a hard drug before using cannabis was dropped from the analysis. That's right: People who took downers or snorted cocaine before trying cannabis, or did anything else counter to the gateway theory, were omitted from the study, stacking the deck.

Posted by GeeTee at February 19, 2003 02:16 PM | TrackBack 0

In a simple historical test of the technique, Kleinberg analysed all the annual State of the Union addresses given by US Presidents since 1790. He found that particular word "bursts" could indeed be linked to important events at the time the speeches were delivered.
In the years that immediately followed the American Revolution, for example, sudden bursts in the use of words such as "militia", "British" and "savages" are found.
From 1930 to 1937 a spike in the use of the word "depression" is seen. And from 1949 to 1959 "atomic" is the word with the greatest "burstiness". Later in the 20th century, words such as "Vietnam", "Soviet", "communist" and "Afghanistan" increase sharply in usage.

Posted by GeeTee at February 19, 2003 01:32 PM | TrackBack 0

"The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity."

Posted by GeeTee at February 19, 2003 01:15 PM | TrackBack 0

"If they (the Americans) want to go there all alone, they can go there all alone but we say they must go with the authorization of the United Nations. If they don't, the international system of peace and security will probably be more destabilized than it need be," [Chretien] said on Tuesday.

Posted by GeeTee at February 19, 2003 01:12 PM | TrackBack 0

The forces, numbering up to 5,000 troops, with some heavy equipment, are nominally under the command of Ayatollah Mohammad Baqir al-Hakim, a prominent Iraqi Shia Muslim opposition leader who has been based in Iran since 1980 and lives in Tehran.

Posted by GeeTee at February 19, 2003 01:09 PM | TrackBack 0

"We have a total of 150 nominees so far, of which 21 are organisations," Geir Lundestad, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, told Reuters on Tuesday after compiling a list of names sent by a February 1 deadline.

So far as I've noticed, Bono's just another whiny musician who (like his contemporary, Sting), thinks a good answer to having talent (regarding which, not being stingy, I'll reserve judgment, instead of saying definitively that I think U2 is nearly as overrated as spray cheese in a can) is to overwhelm it with commonplace political truisms. Any piece of art where the political message is stronger than the aesthetics is not really art. (It usually also indicates a weak political message, meaning the whole vector is not efficient.) Princess Diana did a lot of actual stuff on land mines, but nobody ever suggested _she_ should have a Nobel. Perhaps if she'd showed them her tits.

Posted by GeeTee at February 18, 2003 06:01 PM | TrackBack 0

In another study, Prof Loftus recruited American men and women to talk about childhood visits to Disneyland, with a newspaper advertisement showing a fake scene with Bugs Bunny in the Californian theme park. When interviewed, 33 per cent of the volunteers described meeting Bugs Bunny at Disneyland as children - an impossible event since Bugs Bunny is a Warner Bros character and has never appeared at Disneyland.

Posted by GeeTee at February 18, 2003 01:08 PM | TrackBack 0

Does that mean the American approach is ungreen? Not necessarily. Even if fossil fuels were used to produce hydrogen without sequestration, fuel-cell-powered cars would still produce zero local emissions on roads. (Wags call this %uFFD2drive here, pollute elsewhere%uFFD3.) Further, hydrogen is likely to be produced by some green sources anyway: in the Pacific north-west, hydro-electric power is dirt cheap at night, and on the windswept Great Plains renewables or biomass may prove more economic than fossil fuels.

Posted by GeeTee at February 18, 2003 12:40 PM | TrackBack 0

Existentialism is about re-defining yourself in an increasingly absurd world as defined for you by the traditions of science, philosophy and religion; -- you cannot help but feel alien to it.

Posted by GeeTee at February 18, 2003 12:28 PM | TrackBack 0

It would be easy to write a book that focused on the eccentricities of this industry and for the author to use its pages to mock the secretiveness of the perfumers and to rage self-righteously about the mark-up on a bottle of perfume. (Only about five percent of the price actually covers the "juice.") But instead of following the most obvious path, Chandler Burr listened to his inner geek. With the contagious enthusiasm of a nerd given the run of a chemistry lab, he has transformed a chance meeting with a curious biophysicist named Luca Turin into an amusing and poetic adventure in science and art.

Posted by GeeTee at February 18, 2003 11:28 AM | TrackBack 0

However, evidence presented by the Complainant indicated that the web site had, in fact, "contained several references to alcoholism, alcoholics anonymous and contained a representation of an apparently intoxicated man walking across the screen". In addition, two days after registering the domain Walker approached Diageo - Guinness's' parent company - to enquire whether they would be interested in advertising on any web site associated with it. The Complaint also noted that Walker had only ever used the name Johnnie when contacting Diageo - while other evidence, such as automated email replies from the Respondent, showed that he exclusively used the name John and not Johnnie.

Posted by GeeTee at February 18, 2003 11:25 AM | TrackBack 0

The study builds on previous examinations of the strange and ubiquitous pits, dubbed "Swiss cheese" upon their discovery in 2000. The following year, another group of researchers suggested that the melting that is causing the pits to grow might indicate profound climate change is underway on Mars. This past December, a study hinted strongly at the south pole's water ice by noting the degree to which surface temperatures change from night to day.

Posted by GeeTee at February 17, 2003 07:45 PM | TrackBack 0

"Most women don't expect to be enslaved - they think they're going for legitimate work, like nannies or waitresses. In most cases their passports are taken away. "They're threatened. They're told they'll go to prison. They're too afraid to complain."

Posted by GeeTee at February 17, 2003 07:28 PM | TrackBack 0

Remarkably, the main components in this advanced machine have been built from parts that cost less than $400, and Hanson believes this cost can be dramatically reduced.

Posted by GeeTee at February 17, 2003 07:26 PM | TrackBack 0

Scientists are developing a new generation of atomic clocks which will be so accurate they will have lost only about a second by the time the world ends a few billion years from now.

Posted by GeeTee at February 17, 2003 07:25 PM | TrackBack 0

The Troubadours developed the notion of fin amour - true love. It was a revolution of sentiment in that it was the creation of an Eros towards women. In the ancient world such a thing was practically unknown, at least, no particular stress was put on it; marriage was a strictly practical affair. Romantic love in ancient society was more likely to be directed by men towards other men. With the coming of the Troubadours, for the first time, there was a deliberate idealisation of women, but more importantly, the cultivation of desire for its own sake; the romantic opus. It was intensely poetic and was set about with the most intricate and deliberate inhibitions.

Posted by GeeTee at February 17, 2003 06:44 PM | TrackBack 0

After grabbing the text from the two transcripts, correcting for where the BBC inserted a whole bunch of whitespace, there it was. A count in Word says that there's 866 words in one version that aren't in the other. At all. And they're, variously, about Iraqi moves towards compliance and partial refutation of the evidence presented by Powell to the UNSC.

Posted by GeeTee at February 17, 2003 06:03 PM | TrackBack 0

...the judges have managed to keep the trial on track, restraining Mr Milosevic when his outbursts have been most intemperate and working through the voluminous evidence put before them. Unexpectedly, Mr Milosevic has helped them. He no longer seems intent on wrecking the trial, as was originally feared, but on prolonging it as long as possible in order to keep performing for his audience back home in Serbia, where the proceedings are shown on television. Though he still refuses to recognise the tribunal's legitimacy, he abides by the judges' rulings, stands when they enter or leave the room, and addresses everyone else in the courtroom with a modicum of politeness. By taking part so actively, he has inevitably bolstered the tribunal's credibility, even in the eyes of sceptics. Once the trial is over, he and his supporters will find it hard to argue that he did not get a fair hearing.

Posted by GeeTee at February 17, 2003 04:54 PM | TrackBack 0

My match with Deep Junior is the beginning of a new era in computer chess. Both sides were under strict supervision and every aspect of each game was recorded. As a result, we can see the strengths and shortcomings of the machines, and of ourselves. This marks an important shift in the history of computer chess. We are now moving away from corporate interests--i.e., Man vs. Machine matches as PR for companies like IBM--and toward fair and documented procedures overseen by the World Chess Federation.

Posted by GeeTee at February 17, 2003 04:49 PM | TrackBack 0

In a similar vein, at present it would probably be impossible to spread a false "oil shortage" story through the Internet, as the American oil companies and mainstream media did in 1972. In fact the Internet would probably demolish such propaganda in days. In 1972, it was not until months later that a merchant marine officer told me how his oil supertanker had been held off the New Jersey coast for six weeks at the height of the "oil shortage."

Posted by GeeTee at February 17, 2003 03:33 PM | TrackBack 0

Persuasive evidence in support of this theory has emerged recently in the shape of FOXP2, the first gene proved to affect the ability to learn and process language. Scientists from Oxford University identified the gene in 2001 by studying three generations of the "KE" family who have mutated copies and suffer severe speech and language impediments as a result. They have since shown that the human version differs in two tiny respects from a similar gene found in chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans and mice.

Posted by GeeTee at February 17, 2003 02:27 PM | TrackBack 0

Public school teachers are in much the same position as prison wardens. Wardens' main concern is to keep the prisoners on the premises. They also need to keep them fed, and as far as possible prevent them from killing one another. Beyond that, they want to have as little to do with the prisoners as possible, so they leave them to create whatever social organization they want. From what I've read, the society that the prisoners create is warped, savage, and pervasive, and it is no fun to be at the bottom of it.

This is a lengthy essay, but well worth reading entirely.

Posted by GeeTee at February 17, 2003 02:19 PM | TrackBack 0

There [will be] a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected.

Posted by GeeTee at February 17, 2003 01:39 PM | TrackBack 0

The sensitive and sensible folk at Privacy International have endured enough of this treatment. So until March 15th 2003 we are running an international competition to discover the world's most pointless, intrusive, stupid and self-serving security measures.

Posted by GeeTee at February 17, 2003 12:44 PM | TrackBack 0

And then, just to complete the glorious cliche, a group of builders appears on the scene and becomes most intent on telling me exactly what they think of my melons. As my particular fruits of the vine are (a) more satsuma-esque than melon-like and (b) the least visible parts of my anatomy currently on display, it does make one wonder about the so-called "thought" processes of men.

Posted by GeeTee at February 17, 2003 12:01 PM | TrackBack 0

I spent close to twenty years as a photographer, devoting most of my energy to trying to make art photographs. The rest of my time I spent either teaching photography or photographing paintings. With just one set of pictures—taken in the neonatal intensive care ward of a childrens’ hospital—was I successful in loading up a series of photographs with the kind of energy Gelernter describes. Fifteen years later, I have no idea whether the images were art or not. But they certainly met the need that Kafka wrote about for "those books which come upon us like ill-fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us." The only reason the pictures had such energy was that I had utterly lost interest in photography as art.

Posted by GeeTee at February 16, 2003 08:06 PM | TrackBack 0

Before being placed on the water and manoeuvred into position by tugboats, the houses are constructed on land atop concrete pontoons, which encase giant lumps of polystyrene reinforced with steel. The pontoons are said to be unsinkable because they are anchored by underwater cables. The floating roads apply the same technology.

Posted by GeeTee at February 15, 2003 04:59 AM | TrackBack 0

With 150 million searches per day, most from outside the U.S., Google amounts to a privacy disaster waiting to happen. Those newly-commissioned data-mining bureaucrats in Washington can only dream about the sort of slick efficiency that Google has already achieved. Google deserves your nomination for corporate Big Brother of the Year.

Posted by GeeTee at February 15, 2003 04:51 AM | TrackBack 0

Seiko's Ink Link is nearly as easy to transport - the pen, receiver and infrared beamer all fit into a carrying case not much bigger than the Logitech frankfurter pen - but there's a lot to hook up before you can write. On the other hand, the Ink Link spares you the pricey proprietary paper and special ink refills. It's far more versatile, too, capable of sending your handwriting to a palmtop or even directly into a computer, as the situation demands.

Posted by GeeTee at February 15, 2003 04:38 AM | TrackBack 0

Even now, officials are describing the inclusion of Jedi as a religion as "not a serious answer". Of course, they won't be saying that when some "death star" parks itself in the Earth's orbit.

My response to the person who sent this:

If 400,000ish people are declaring the same thing on their census form, it is a serious answer, and it is as reasonable for it to be classified as a religion as any other kind of nonsense that costs a lot of money and makes people dress up in excruciatingly detailed outfits to wait to see the Pope or Boba Fett's stunt double. For a government to say it's "not serious" is grossly inappropriate -- even votes for Ralph Nader get counted, after all.

What's interesting is the demonstration of mass psychological dynamic. A law (or policy) that people tend to break is almost always flawed.

If I sound like I'm taking it very seriously, well, I am. It's not for governments to decide what is 'serious'. I _personally_ am bothered by people putting 'Jedi' because some of them probably mean it, and it's distressing to see people's brains getting sucked by superficial philosophy when what they want is... And the others have no better beliefs to put down, which is also distressing. But that's no reason for the government to ignore what the people have said, however dumbass it may be.

Posted by GeeTee at February 14, 2003 09:42 AM | TrackBack 0

Before making a final decision on whether the missiles contravened UN rules, Dr Blix convened a meeting of outside missile experts from Britain, China, France, Ukraine, Germany and the US on Monday and Tuesday. Diplomatic sources said that those experts determined that the al-Samoud 2 exceeded the 150km range, but that the capability of the al-Fatah remained an "open question".

Posted by GeeTee at February 13, 2003 12:30 PM | TrackBack 0

The troops, comprising two Special Operations Task Forces with an undetermined number of personnel, have been in and out of Iraq for well over a month, said two military officials with direct knowledge of their activities. They are laying the groundwork for conventional U.S. forces that could quickly seize large portions of Iraq if President Bush gives a formal order to go to war, the officials said.

Posted by GeeTee at February 13, 2003 08:46 AM | TrackBack 0

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), angered by France's policies on agriculture as well as on Iraq, has told associates he would like to target two of that nation's most sacred drinks: water and wine. At a GOP retreat this past weekend, Hastert talked to House members about slapping restrictions on French exports of bottled water and fine wine.

Posted by GeeTee at February 13, 2003 08:42 AM | TrackBack 0

One important factor in the breadth of the opposition is the fact that the project is headed by retired Adm. John Poindexter. Several members of Congress have said he is an unwelcome symbol because he was convicted of lying to Congress when he was President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser. That his conviction was reversed on the grounds that he had been given immunity for the testimony in which he lied did not mitigate congressional opinion, they said.

Posted by GeeTee at February 13, 2003 08:41 AM | TrackBack 0

"The report reads like a conspiracy novel, with some of the nation's finest banks, accounting firms and attorneys working together to prop up the biggest corporate farce of this century," Mr Grassley said.

Posted by GeeTee at February 13, 2003 08:39 AM | TrackBack 0

The word gun was banned from spelling tests in one school only and not across the Upper Canada District School Board, board officials said Tuesday.

Posted by GeeTee at February 12, 2003 12:54 PM | TrackBack 0

“I was making the case that if we go into Iraq and discover weapons of mass destruction, then the world would come to realize we’d been right,” Smith recalled. “And they told me, ‘If that happens, it’s only because the CIA planted them.’ I was floored.”

Posted by GeeTee at February 12, 2003 09:59 AM | TrackBack 0

Paul Bryan of suburban Coquitlam is charged with violating the Canada Elections Act by posting results of the 2000 federal election on his Web site while polls were still open on the West Coast. Provincial court Judge Kerry Smith ruled Tuesday against Bryan's argument that the law was an unreasonable breach of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Smith said it is reasonable for Parliament to limit freedom of expression under Section 1 of the charter and he was bound to uphold the law.

Posted by GeeTee at February 12, 2003 09:40 AM | TrackBack 0

The strategy and tactics used by many regular players and teams, or clans, often makes it seem like a game of chess, he said.

Posted by GeeTee at February 12, 2003 08:29 AM | TrackBack 0

Video taping TV shows has become the normLittle is done to counter this because, as [Lessig] pointed out "where I come from the presumption is that what is good for AOL is good for America", and as a result only corporate interests are reflected in government policy.

Posted by GeeTee at February 12, 2003 06:23 AM | TrackBack 0

Competing as 2002's Worst Picture are Eddie Murphy's THE ADVENTURES OF PLUTO NASH (which cost over $85 million and grossed under $5 million), the first joint effort from Mr. and Mrs. Madonna SWEPT AWAY, Madonna- Wannabe Britney Spears' less-than-auspicious screen debut CROSSROADS, former Oscar® winner Roberto Benigni's wooden-headed (and horribly-dubbed) remake of PINOCCHIO, and George Lucas' disappointing 5th entry from a galaxy far, far too long, STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES.

Posted by GeeTee at February 12, 2003 05:27 AM | TrackBack 0

Chrétien told the House of Commons he wants to change the perception that money talks in Ottawa, and big business and big unions have too much influence.

Posted by GeeTee at February 12, 2003 05:11 AM | TrackBack 0

Judges ruled Singleton would be better off with drugsThe decision breaks new ground, allowing officials in Arkansas to force a mentally-ill prisoner to take medication so that he can subsequently be executed.

Posted by GeeTee at February 12, 2003 05:09 AM | TrackBack 0

"Singleton presents the court with a choice between involuntary medication followed by an execution and no medication followed by psychosis and imprisonment," Judge Roger L. Wollman wrote for the majority in ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Now, I'm in favour of executing crazy psychos, because I think it's unjust to spend money on murderers, however much it may not be their fault, when there are little kids wearing boxes instead of winter boots. I am not, though, in favour of making crazy psychos take enough dope to make them sane psychos just so they fit the criteria for being executed. I find it astonishing that people who judge for a living are so obsessed by details that they can't see how overall hideous their decision is.

Posted by GeeTee at February 11, 2003 07:02 AM | TrackBack 0

According to BCTV, Maui prosecutors have charged Campbell with speeding, failing to drive on the right side of the road and disregarding traffic lane markings.

Posted by GeeTee at February 11, 2003 04:46 AM | TrackBack 0

Tartikoff said that he was willing to cooperate with the Bond producers, to share Brosnan's time. The new Steele episodes were thus scheduled to be filmed in Europe to accommodate production of The Living Daylights. But Broccoli did not believe that the public would plunk down money to see an actor in the movie theaters when they could see him on TV every week portraying a similar character for free. There was a mad scramble in London as the search for a new Bond began.

Posted by GeeTee at February 10, 2003 07:08 PM | TrackBack 0

Why replace France with India? Because India is the world's biggest democracy, the world's largest Hindu nation and the world's second-largest Muslim nation, and, quite frankly, India is just so much more serious than France these days. France is so caught up with its need to differentiate itself from America to feel important, it's become silly. India has grown out of that game. India may be ambivalent about war in Iraq, but it comes to its ambivalence honestly. Also, France can't see how the world has changed since the end of the cold war. India can.

Posted by GeeTee at February 10, 2003 08:58 AM | TrackBack 0

The logo of the Information Awareness Office does nothing to allay those concerns with its disturbing Orwellian imagery of the all-knowing eye scanning the globe. The Total Information Awareness Gift Shop is a modest comedic attempt to stimulate public awareness and interest in an issue which could detrimentally impact our civil liberties for years to come.

Posted by GeeTee at February 10, 2003 08:43 AM | TrackBack 0

"Public schools should not be hostile to the religious rights of their students and their families," Education Secretary Rod Paige said. "At the same time, school officials may not compel students to participate in prayer or other activities."

Posted by GeeTee at February 09, 2003 01:26 PM | TrackBack 0

The mission of the Summit is to explore the evolving forms of money and the complex and broad-ranging effect it will have on technology, business, society, and public policy.

Posted by GeeTee at February 09, 2003 12:45 PM | TrackBack 0

Reitman, who is Canadian but works in Hollywood, said filmmakers here are more caught up with securing government funding than connecting with audiences.

Posted by GeeTee at February 09, 2003 12:02 PM | TrackBack 0

In Canada, a nation often obsessed with its next-door superpower, the deaths of the four soldiers have come to epitomize the widely held perception that the United States takes Canada for granted. The incident has also become an enduring symbol of the sacrifice that Canadians believe they make when the United States is in need but that is not reciprocated on issues critical to Canada.

Posted by GeeTee at February 09, 2003 10:37 AM | TrackBack 0

This is publishing on a departmental level. Don't look to BBSes for prior art, look to desktop publishing. I've been saying this to Clay over and over. This is different. The Web is not like every other POS that's come along over the years. It's unfortunate that Clay doesn't actually have a weblog. Then maybe he'd get a sense of how they work.

Posted by GeeTee at February 09, 2003 10:25 AM | TrackBack 0

Scan of Patriot Act II.

Posted by GeeTee at February 09, 2003 08:54 AM | TrackBack 0

Because the basic Moneo card is anonymous, there are no privacy or identity theft concerns. But if an owner loses his or her smart card, the cash that's stored onboard can be used by whoever finds it -- which is why there's a $107 storage limit.

Posted by GeeTee at February 09, 2003 08:04 AM | TrackBack 0

The immigration system, which is required by federal legislation, would be the government's first significant foothold in using machines that track identifying aspects of the human body. Already 15 million people in North America -- 10 million American green-card holders, 5 million Mexican citizens with special cards allowing regular border crossings and hundreds of thousands of Canadians -- have cards, making this program the largest of its type in the world, government officials say.

Posted by GeeTee at February 09, 2003 07:58 AM | TrackBack 0

Though there are more new bloggers and more new readers every day, most of the new readers are adding to the traffic of the top few blogs, while most new blogs are getting below average traffic, a gap that will grow as the weblog world does. It's not impossible to launch a good new blog and become widely read, but it's harder than it was last year, and it will be harder still next year. At some point (probably one we've already passed), weblog technology will be seen as a platform for so many forms of publishing, filtering, aggregation, and syndication that blogging will stop referring to any particularly coherent activity. The term 'blog' will fall into the middle distance, as 'home page' and 'portal' have, words that used to mean some concrete thing, but which were stretched by use past the point of meaning. This will happen when head and tail of the power law distribution become so different that we can't think of J. Random Blogger and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit as doing the same thing.

Posted by GeeTee at February 09, 2003 07:46 AM | TrackBack 0

While the Java language provides many advantages over C and C , its implementation on Solaris presents barriers to the delivery of reliable applications. These barriers prevent general acceptance of Java for production software within Sun. A review of the problem indicates that these issues are not inherent to Java but instead represent implementation oversights and inconsistencies common to projects which do not communicate effectively with partners and users.

Posted by GeeTee at February 09, 2003 07:34 AM | TrackBack 0

Our nation's immediate threat is still Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda terrorist network. We have full knowledge of North Korea's equally rapidly developing nuclear weapons program under the control of an equally diabolical leader. There's well-published accounts of several Mid-east governments aiding and funding known terrorists. Of America's imminent threats, Saddam Hussein is much lower on the list.

(Preach on, brother DeFazio!)

Posted by GeeTee at February 08, 2003 06:21 AM | TrackBack 0

The call cost the man his liberty. It may yet cost him his life but, more importantly, it could have provided America with the "smoking gun" evidence it has long sought and which apparently links the Iraqi regime to an active al-Qa'ida cell committing terror killings and planning others across Europe and the Middle East. One thing is certain: it has left Iraq needing to do a lot of explaining.

Posted by GeeTee at February 07, 2003 06:54 PM | TrackBack 0

The Center for Public Integrity has obtained a draft, dated January 9, 2003, of this previously undisclosed legislation and is making it available in full text (12 MB). The bill, drafted by the staff of Attorney General John Ashcroft and entitled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, has not been officially released by the Department of Justice, although rumors of its development have circulated around the Capitol for the last few months under the name of "the Patriot Act II" in legislative parlance.

Posted by GeeTee at February 07, 2003 06:07 PM | TrackBack 0

The drug tax is due as soon as the dealer takes possession of the marijuana or controlled substance. Payment of the drug tax will purchase the drug tax stamps. Attach the stamp to the marijuana and/or controlled substance immediately after receiving the substance. The stamps are valid for 3 months. Drugs seized without stamps or having expired stamps may result in criminal or civil penalties which may include fines, seizure of property or liens against real estate.

Posted by GeeTee at February 07, 2003 02:44 PM | TrackBack 0

"If you think of foreign policy as a toolbox, there are a whole range of options - you can convene allies, impose economic sanctions, expel ambassadors, jam hate radio," she said. "There is always something you can do, but if you look at most of these cases, you see that the toolbox stays closed even when the violations are bad, really bad, even when they are in the red zone."

Posted by GeeTee at February 07, 2003 01:41 PM | TrackBack 0

The Washington Post this week asked Ms. Newkirk if she had ``considered asking Arafat to persuade those who listen to him to stop blowing up people as well'' as animals.
[...]
``It's not my business to inject myself into human wars,'' Newkirk told the Post.

Posted by GeeTee at February 07, 2003 01:37 PM | TrackBack 0

Esther Dyson, one of the key figures in the development of the commercial Internet, advisor to Al Gore, promoter of the Net in Eastern Europe and poster woman for the dotcom millionaires, went to massive lengths today to distance herself from the failures of ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Despite having been a Founding Director, Dyson now says that her involvement in ICANN's development was actually very limited.

Posted by GeeTee at February 07, 2003 08:03 AM | TrackBack 0

That site and others allowed citizens to swap Gore votes in states where Bush was likely to win anyway for the Green party candidate Nader. A Nader supporter in a state with a closer contest would then pledge to vote for Gore in return. Swaps of votes for other candidates were also theoretically possible.

Posted by GeeTee at February 07, 2003 07:51 AM | TrackBack 0

"This system may be designed to prevent MPs blushing from blue emails, but in practice it is blocking discussion of the new Sexual Offences Bill. "

Posted by GeeTee at February 07, 2003 07:48 AM | TrackBack 0

The problem in Vietnam was that we couldn't get these people to negotiate. Johnson always believed that there was no such thing as victory--only negotiation. He never could get the Vietcong to the negotiating table. A lot of people urged him to go all out, as Richard Nixon did later, to bomb them into the Stone Age; he refused to do that, ultimately to his detriment.

Posted by GeeTee at February 07, 2003 06:54 AM | TrackBack 0

They worry people under 18 are "invisible" as citizens because they have no say in politics.

Posted by GeeTee at February 07, 2003 06:14 AM | TrackBack 0

Deidre Sullivan, a comedian and writer, thinks the tension between lesbians and former lesbians is understandable: "Lesbians who live in the lesbian ghetto and hang out in lesbian bars named after dog food and cat food, dreaming of the hot transit worker at the end of the bar, are myopic and suspicious. The hasbian is very threatening because she crosses in and out of a sacred space. People fought so hard for the right to congregate in gay bars and to express their love openly, and now the interloper comes along."/p>

Posted by GeeTee at February 07, 2003 06:12 AM | TrackBack 0

...the three films for which the lead actresses are sure to be nominated are all essentially the same film. They tell the same sad story: Women are tragic, under-appreciated figures trapped in their own lives. Worthy and well-told as this story is, it is not the only storyline available for womankind. And it limits the emotions that the actresses get to play to two: either muted sorrow (The Hours, Far from Heaven) or feisty bitchiness (Chicago).

Posted by GeeTee at February 07, 2003 06:02 AM | TrackBack 0

Channel Four News has learnt that the bulk of the nineteen page document was copied from three different articles - one written by a graduate student. On Monday, the day before the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell addressed the UN, Downing Street published its latest paper on Iraq. It gives the impression of being an up to the minute intelligence-based analysis - and Mr Powell was fulsome in his praise. Published on the Number 10 web site, called "Iraq - Its Infrastructure of Concealment Deception and Intimidation", it outlines the structure of Saddam's intelligence organisations. But it made familiar reading to Cambridge academic Glen Ranwala. It was copied from an article last September in a small journal: the Middle East Review of International Affairs.

Posted by GeeTee at February 07, 2003 04:57 AM | TrackBack 0

"I look forward to welcoming President Bush on his first state visit to Canada," said the Prime Minister. "His visit will provide a valuable opportunity for us to continue our discussions on a range of bilateral and international issues of mutual interest and concern to our two nations."

Drop by while you're here, Dubya, I'm just around the corner from your embassy.

Posted by GeeTee at February 07, 2003 04:51 AM | TrackBack 0

Of the 13 sheep with pig hearts, one rejected the new heart. Five more showed milder rejection signs, and were successfully treated with anti-inflammatory medications. The remaining sheep showed no signs of organ rejection for as long as 70 days.

Posted by GeeTee at February 07, 2003 04:49 AM | TrackBack 0

"France is no longer the ally it once was," Perle said. And he went on to accuse French President Jacques Chirac of believing "deep in his soul that Saddam Hussein is preferable to any likely successor."

Posted by GeeTee at February 05, 2003 03:41 PM | TrackBack 0

The photographer requested that his name not be used and said he would not release the image to the public until NASA experts had time to examine it.

Posted by GeeTee at February 05, 2003 03:30 PM | TrackBack 0

It is the brainchild of Professor Susumu Tachi who is in the early stage of research he hopes will eventually make camouflaged objects virtually transparent.

Posted by GeeTee at February 05, 2003 03:26 PM | TrackBack 0

The book was initially published in 1983. 13,000 copies of the book are now in existence. There has only ever been one case where the book was associated with a crime, in that case the criminal had recently finished a lengthy prison sentence and had a history of prior violent crime. It is our opinion this book has never incited a murder, that the settlement of the Paladin Press case was wrong and forced by the insurance company, and that this book, and no book, should be banned. We invite the public to judge for themselves.

Posted by GeeTee at February 05, 2003 09:14 AM | TrackBack 0

I was brought up at a time when half the English people voted Conservative at national elections and almost all English intellectuals regarded the term %uFFD2conservative%uFFD3 as a term of abuse. To be a conservative, I was told, was to be on the side of age against youth, the past against the future, authority against innovation, the %uFFD2structures%uFFD3 against spontaneity and life. It was enough to understand this, to recognize that one had no choice, as a free-thinking intellectual, save to reject conservatism. The choice remaining was between reform and revolution. Do we improve society bit by bit, or do we rub it out and start again? On the whole my contemporaries favored the second option, and it was when witnessing what this meant, in May 1968 in Paris, that I discovered my vocation.

Posted by GeeTee at February 05, 2003 09:09 AM | TrackBack 0

Taylor, who appears to reside near Everett, Wash., declined to explain how, exactly, he secured a .gov domain for the group, calling AONN's operations "classified."

Posted by GeeTee at February 05, 2003 09:02 AM | TrackBack 0

Joining this movement is simple. Just masturbate in your own way, focusing your thoughts and energy towards love and peace. Encourage others to do the same. Also, please fill out the petition below and tell us how you intend to masturbate for peace. We will share the most thoughtful petitions on this site.

Posted by GeeTee at February 05, 2003 08:38 AM | TrackBack 0

Edwards said a space elevator could transport materials into the cosmos for about $100 a kilogram. He estimated that sending materials on a shuttle costs $10,000 to $40,000 per kilogram. That could make it affordable, for example, to build huge solar-energy gatherers and send them into space on the elevator.

Posted by GeeTee at February 05, 2003 08:34 AM | TrackBack 0

John Dryden observed in 1681 that "Great wits are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide," echoing the observation made centuries ago by the philosopher Aristotle that madness and genius seem to go hand in hand. In this cultural tradition, we often believe that the mental illnesses of great poets are simply a condition of their own artistic genius.

Posted by GeeTee at February 05, 2003 08:19 AM | TrackBack 0

After reading the story below, please contact state officials in Florida and ask them to preserve the ballots from the 2000 election. Although most of us aren't Floridians, those ballots are a crucial part of US politics and history. They form the basis for understanding the most controversial election in American history. Destroying them would create a huge, irreversible loss.

Posted by GeeTee at February 05, 2003 08:11 AM | TrackBack 0

Problems with the tiles that protect the shuttle body from searing heat as it re-enters the earth were known for long but ignored, critics say. It is these tiles that are now the main focus of inquiry in the Columbia break-up as it was re-entering the earth's atmosphere, killing seven astronauts, including India-born Kalpana Chawla.

Posted by GeeTee at February 05, 2003 07:05 AM | TrackBack 0

In the end, "Macca" always wins. Paul McCartney's original idea for the Beatles' album Let It Be will finally be realized with a new stripped-down version that might have been. As Rolling Stone reports in their upcoming February issue, an alternate version of the record is forthcoming from Apple Records this year. Different from most re-releases, the new version of Let It Be will be distinguished by what it doesn't have: The bloated orchestrations that producer Phil Spector added to the final album. Ever the consummate wordsmith, Ringo Starr was quoted in the magazine as saying, "It's the de-Spectorized version."

Posted by GeeTee at February 04, 2003 05:16 PM | TrackBack 0

The Canada Customs and Revenue Agency is planning to develop a "Big Brother" database that will record more than 30 separate pieces of information on every Canadian who travels abroad, including destinations and dietary preferences.

Posted by GeeTee at February 04, 2003 05:15 PM | TrackBack 0

According to Bocquet, a stone will only bounce if its initial velocity exceeds a certain value. If the stone is also spinning, this introduces a stabilizing torque that can maintain the initial angle at which it hits the water - which helps the stone bounce again.

Posted by GeeTee at February 04, 2003 09:49 AM | TrackBack 0

First, there's a huge difference between being arrested and being guilty. Second, see, the law changes and I don't. How I stand vis-à-vis the law at any given moment depends on the law. The law can change from state to state, from nation to nation, from city to city. I guess I have to go by a higher law. How's that? Yeah, I consider myself a road man for the lords of karma.

Posted by GeeTee at February 04, 2003 07:43 AM | TrackBack 0

Considering the NSI believes the decision may force the end of the Internet and have "enormous ramifications for a large sector of similar service providers, including cable television service and telephone service providers", it is a shame its legal arguments aren't stronger.

Posted by GeeTee at February 04, 2003 07:28 AM | TrackBack 0

"To the extent the open source model gains increasing market acceptance, sales of the company's products may decline, the company may have to reduce the prices it charges for its products, and revenues and operating margins may consequently decline," it said.

Heart bleeds.

Posted by GeeTee at February 04, 2003 07:25 AM | TrackBack 0

The diversity of Kubrick's work is truly astonishing, even though the director's technical precision and steely perspective on humanity may strike uninitiated viewers as cold and even misanthropic. His films almost always received mixed (and sometimes scathingly negative) reviews upon their release, only to benefit from glowing reassessment as they grew entrenched in the public consciousness. Here, in all their glory, are the collected films of a genuine master, ripe for study and appreciation for many years to come.

Posted by GeeTee at February 04, 2003 06:34 AM | TrackBack 0

"Some people have [asked], 'How could anybody who says 'nucular' have any real grasp of where atomic energy comes from?" the linguist says. "That's why people get upset . . . it suggests [government officials] don't understand it, but yet have got their fingers on the button.
"But I think it's because they have their fingers on the button that they do it."

Posted by GeeTee at February 04, 2003 06:21 AM | TrackBack 0

A diplomat stated that it would not be an appropriate background if the ambassador of the United States at the U.N. John Negroponte, or Powell, talk about war surrounded with women, children and animals shouting with horror and showing the suffering of the bombings.

Posted by GeeTee at February 04, 2003 04:37 AM | TrackBack 0

Posted by GeeTee at February 04, 2003 04:35 AM | TrackBack 0

Any new space system that reduced costs would be, to the contractors, killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Just a few weeks ago, NASA canceled a program called the Space Launch Initiative, whose goal was to design a much cheaper and more reliable replacement for the shuttle. Along with the cancellation, NASA announced that the shuttle fleet would remain in operation until 2020, meaning that Columbia was supposed to continue flying into outer space even when its airframe was more than 40 years old! True, B-52s have flown as long. But they don't endure three times the force of gravity on takeoff and 2000*none on re-entry.

Posted by GeeTee at February 04, 2003 04:21 AM | TrackBack 0

The HBO television series SIX FEET UNDER, about the members of a dynamic Los Angeles-based family that operates the Fischer and Sons Funeral Home, has an ironically grim, but intriguing premise: each episode is based on the death and extenuating circumstances of the family's current client. When a porno star dies and is brought to Fischer and Sons, an entourage of her former costars appear to mourn her death. In another episode, the family must negotiate with tough Mexican-American gang members who have very specific requests for the funeral of one of their brethren. A sassy drama that is rife with black comedy, SIX FEET UNDER follows other HBO hit series like SEX IN THE CITY, THE SOPRANOS, and OZ.

Posted by GeeTee at February 03, 2003 04:53 PM | TrackBack 0

"People are just very gullible," he said.

Posted by GeeTee at February 03, 2003 07:22 AM | TrackBack 0

Von Tiesenhausen is well known for his wooden outdoor sculptures, which dot his rural property near Grande Prairie.
He argued that oil development near his property would hamper his artistic expression. The landscape, he said, was his art, and therefore protected by copyright.

Posted by GeeTee at February 03, 2003 05:37 AM | TrackBack 0

If they did, it would become apparent that "a merger would solve problems for both America Online and Microsoft," argues Bibb. A sale of the Internet unit would suit several camps within Time Warner and the investment community just fine. By many measures, the $158 billion merger -- the biggest in corporate history -- has been a spectacular failure. Since the deal closed, AOL Time Warner has written off $99.5 billion in goodwill, including the latest charge, and is within a whisker of violating its loan covenants. Plus, AOL Time Warner is in dire need of cash -- and Microsoft has $40 billion of that. By selling the online service, AOL Time Warner could pay down billions in debt and bolster its credit rating, which has fallen dangerously close to junk levels.

Posted by GeeTee at February 02, 2003 04:32 PM | TrackBack 0

[I enjoyed Robert's warning (http://www.politechbot.com/p-04390.html), but he's looking at "chipping" like a lawyer instead of through the lens of economics. It seems clear to me that if some manufactures sufficiently vex people by "chipping," then their customers will turn elsewhere to non-chipped products. And competitors will advertise "unchipped" alternatives, as we saw in the Yahoo case (http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/20568.html). It's not like there's a lack of competition in the laser printer, car, coffee maker, dishwasher, or other markets Robert cited. --Declan]

Posted by GeeTee at February 02, 2003 03:51 PM | TrackBack 0

McArthur said other countries would refuse to support the U.S. in its war plans until the Americans gave concessions in a trade battle. He said Canada, though, is intimidated by the U.S.

Posted by GeeTee at February 02, 2003 03:48 PM | TrackBack 0

There are three labels. One will say, ``This mark indicates material can be copied.'' The mark lets users copy or print material from Internet Web sites and distribute it without specific permission from the copyright holder, as long as the labeled content is not altered.

Posted by GeeTee at February 02, 2003 03:22 PM | TrackBack 0

"Saddam's weapons of mass destruction are also concealed in a tunnel complex deep beneath the sewers of Baghdad and in an underground complex in Ouja, to the north of Tikrit.
"The complex was built five years ago with help from Chinese engineers.
"The entrance to the site is through a house in Tikrit. It is the home of one of Saddam's cousins and is more than half a mile from where the weapons are stored."

Posted by GeeTee at February 02, 2003 03:14 PM | TrackBack 0

No tougher sanctions are introduced against individuals who download tracks for noncommercial use. Criminal sanctions only apply when copyright infringement is carried out intentionally and for commercial purposes, the Commission said.

Posted by GeeTee at February 02, 2003 03:01 PM | TrackBack 0

Here, it is not cream or milk that the employees of Linguagen Corp. add to their morning java, but a dash of a biological compound that fools their brain into thinking that black, bitter coffee is as smooth as a milky double latte: All the flavour, none of the calories, and the effects last only as long as it takes them to drain their mugs.

Posted by GeeTee at February 02, 2003 02:58 PM | TrackBack 0

When you buy an Animal Mercy Kit, you enable a family to purchase a sheep and increase their household income.

Posted by GeeTee at February 02, 2003 02:47 PM | TrackBack 0

NASA declared an emergency and feared the worst after losing communication with space shuttle Columbia as the ship and its seven astronauts soared over Texas several minutes before its expected landing Saturday. As the minutes wore on, there appeared to be no hope for their survival.

Posted by GeeTee at February 01, 2003 07:20 AM | TrackBack 0

Perhaps it's telling of my Western-based culture that I was so surprised when a friend of mine asked if I would host his Web site after he died. I had simply not given any thought to the problem of what happens to a site after someone passes away or can no longer support it for health reasons.

Posted by GeeTee at February 01, 2003 05:07 AM | TrackBack 0

Can we reasonably expect the Internet to be used for e-democracy, for example, when all it takes is your stereotypical troubled loner with a toolbox of hacks to assemble a denial-of-service attack on election day from that Internet cafe on Yonge just north of Sheppard in Toronto? And why are you looking at me like that?

Posted by GeeTee at February 01, 2003 05:06 AM | TrackBack 0

"There are people in this country who face addiction and hopelessness and despair. Those people need our help," Mr. Rove said. "It seems ... a far more powerful call to sacrifice than to say, 'Don't drive 10 miles a week,' or, 'trade in your SUV for a Honda Civic.' "

Posted by GeeTee at February 01, 2003 05:02 AM | TrackBack 0

Dr Blix took issue with what he said were US Secretary of State Colin Powell's claims that the inspectors had found that Iraqi officials were hiding and moving illicit materials within and outside of Iraq to prevent their discovery. He said that the inspectors had reported no such incidents.
Similarly, he said, he had not seen convincing evidence that Iraq was sending weapons scientists to other countries to prevent them from being interviewed.
Nor had he any reason to believe, as President George Bush charged in his State of the Union speech, that Iraqi agents were posing as scientists, or that his inspection agency had been penetrated by Iraqi agents and that sensitive information might have been leaked to Baghdad.
Finally, he said, he had seen no persuasive indications of Iraqi ties to al-Qaeda. "There are other states where there appear to be stronger links," such as Afghanistan, Dr Blix said. "It's bad enough that Iraq may have weapons of mass destruction."

Posted by GeeTee at February 01, 2003 05:00 AM | TrackBack 0

It concludes that the cancer epidemic is a result of pollution from nuclear energy and of exposures to global atmospheric weapons fallout, which peaked in the period 1959-63. The research cites evidence such as the levels of breast cancer in women who were adolescent between 1957 and 1963, when nuclear weapons testing was at its peak.

Posted by GeeTee at February 01, 2003 04:58 AM | TrackBack 0

It also said priests did not have the right to change baptism registers to take account of a believer's new gender, even if the change was recognised by civil authorities.

Posted by GeeTee at February 01, 2003 04:56 AM | TrackBack 0

A scientist who denies the "fact" of human evolution, Dini writes, is in effect committing "malpractice regarding the method of science."

I don't see how anybody's freedom is impinged. Whether a professor gives a letter of recommendation is (and must be) purely at his discretion, and he should be permitted to apply any inhibitions he wants.

Posted by GeeTee at February 01, 2003 04:48 AM | TrackBack 0

...in the paragraphs marked "S" for "secret," the Sept. 14 directive clearly states that nuclear weapons are part of the "overwhelming force" that Washington might use in response to a chemical or biological attack.

Posted by GeeTee at February 01, 2003 04:37 AM | TrackBack 0