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| "The federal appeals court here has refused to reconsider its ruling
that allows Californians to grow and use marijuana to treat their illnesses.
The Bush administration had asked the court, for the Ninth Circuit, to hold a new hearing on that ruling, issued by a three-judge panel in December on a lawsuit filed by two women with chronic illnesses. But in an order issued Wednesday and made public on Thursday, the court denied the request." NYT(reg/req) |
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| "The U.S. military is facing the gravest accusations of sexual misconduct in years, with dozens of women saying they were assaulted or raped by fellow troops." NYT (reg/req) |
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| "You may not have to drink eight glasses of water a day to be well hydrated, and you can count caffeinated beverages in your total water intake, according to a new report from the Institute of Medicine, the group that sets desirable levels of nutrient intake for Americans of all ages." NYT(reg/req) |
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| "Astronomers announced yesterday they had found strong new evidence
that a theory Albert Einstein proposed but later discarded may have been
right after all, providing crucial new clues to the fundamental nature
and eventual fate of the cosmos.
A detailed analysis of light from ancient exploding stars has yielded powerful support for the idea that recently discovered "dark energy" that pervades the universe might be what Einstein originally dubbed the 'cosmological constant.' If confirmed, the findings support theories that the cosmos will continue its slow expansion toward nothingness instead of violently ripping apart or collapsing, astronomers said." The Washington Post |
| "Don't blame us, we didn't know" could be the White House's new tag line - Russ Baker writes in TomPain.com |
| "This history of the soul begins by reminding us what a let-down our bodies are: they fall apart sooner than they should, they only live once and they're wracked by a series of unhealthy passions and desires. It's as a way of compensating for many of our frailties - Rosalie Osmond suggests - that people have throughout time been so drawn to the concept of a soul." Alain de Botton reviews Imagining the Soul: A History by Rosalie Osmond in the Telegraph |
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| "The administration's urgency to install a government in Iraq reflects more concern for U.S. politics than Iraqi democracy." NYT(reg/req) |
| "In Egypt, more than a quarter of 4-year-olds are overweight. In Zambia,
between 15 and 20 percent of the preschoolers are considered obese. And
in Chile, more than 25 percent of children younger than 10 tip the scales
at unhealthy weights, according to the London-based International Obesity
Task Force.
Now considered a worldwide epidemic, 'globesity' is spreading faster in developing countries than in the industrialized world, nutritionists say. The Westernization of diets is considered a key factor." Christian Science Monitor |
| "More than 60 influential scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, issued a statement yesterday asserting that the Bush administration had systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad." NYT(reg/req) |
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| "...young people, by far the hardest to reach segment of the political news audience, are abandoning mainstream sources of election news and increasingly citing alternative outlets, including comedy shows such as the Daily Show and Saturday Night Live, as their source for election news." The Pew Research Center |
| "That Valentine's box of delectable chocolates that made your heart sing last weekend also might — if it is the right type — help make it tick better and longer, scientists gathered last week in Washington said." NYT(reg/req) |
| "Astronomers announced Friday that a white dwarf star they've been studying is a chunk of crystallized carbon that weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds. That's the same as a diamond that is approximately 10 billion trillion trillion carats, or a one followed by 34 zeros." USA Today |
| "Once upon a time, if you wanted to talk about the end of the universe
you had a choice, as Robert Frost put it, between fire and ice.
Either the universe would collapse under its own weight one day, in a fiery 'big crunch,' or the galaxies, now flying outward from each other, would go on coasting outward forever, forever slowing, but never stopping while the cosmos grew darker and darker, colder and colder, as the stars gradually burned out like tired bulbs. Now there is the Big Rip. Recent astronomical measurements, scientists say, cannot rule out the possibility that in a few billion years a mysterious force permeating space-time will be strong enough to blow everything apart, shred rocks, animals, molecules and finally even atoms in a last seemingly mad instant of cosmic self-abnegation." NYT (reg/req) |
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| "You can now have your very own Navy F/A-18A Hornet jet fighter -- but some assembly may be required." AP via Chicago Tribune (reg/req) |
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| "A prehistoric lost world deep under the North Sea where man once hunted
animals has been mapped by scientists with the help of earthquake data.
A team of archaeologists, geologists and engineers from the University of Birmingham have combined the latest computer techniques to devise a 3D reconstruction of the 10,000-year-old plain. The virtual features they have developed include a 600m-wide river the length of the Thames which disappeared when its valley flooded due to glaciers melting. The plain, part of a land mass that once joined Britain to northern Europe, disappeared about 8,000 years ago and was previously unknown to scientists." Ananova |
| "...Many Islamic radicals borrowed their anti-Western concepts from Russia and Germany. The founders of the Ba'ath Party in Syria were keen readers of prewar German race theories..." The Chronicle of Higher Education |
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| "For the first time since the United States invaded Iraq a year ago, the nation is evenly divided over the war." Christian Science Monitor |
| "The St. Valentine's Day massacre of 1929 certified Chicago as the gangster capital of the world and changed American history. It helped spur the repeal of Prohibition, got the feds involved in busting the mob and made Al Capone a household name even as it sealed his downfall in the underworld. Since then, books and movies have recounted how the victims were lined up against a brick wall, then gunned down from behind by Capone thugs dressed as cops. But after 75 years, the crime remains shrouded in mystery. No one was ever convicted of taking part in it, and the identities of the gunmen have been the subject of contentious speculation." Chicago Tribune (reg/req) |
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| "A classified U.S. intelligence study done three months before the
war in Iraq predicted a problem now confronting the Bush administration:
the possibility that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction might never be found.
The study by a team of U.S. intelligence analysts, military officers and civilian Pentagon officials warned that U.S. military tactics, guerrilla warfare, looting and lying by Iraqi officials would undermine the search for banned Iraqi weapons. Portions of the study were made available to USA TODAY." |
| "A large portion of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, could be held for many years, perhaps indefinitely." NYT(reg/req) |
| "Mr. Bush said yesterday that smaller developing countries must stop developing nuclear fuel, even as the U.S. develops a whole new arsenal of smaller nuclear weapons to use against smaller developing countries that might be thinking about developing nuclear fuel." NYT's Op-Ed |
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| "A music video glorifying Usama bin Ladin and containing images of the 11 September attacks in New York has become a big hit with young Muslims in Britain." Aljazeera |
| "There are three things one can usually depend on: death, taxes, and
conservative columnists strongly supporting President Bush. Well, maybe
two things.
During the past couple of weeks, some scribes on the right have expressed misgivings about Bush because of his Feb. 8 "Meet the Press" performance, his minimal military experience when compared with John Kerry's, the burgeoning budget deficit, and the fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction the president claimed were in Iraq." Editor & Publisher |
| "As Texas Gov. George W. Bush prepared to run for president in the late 1990s, top-ranking Texas National Guard officers and Bush advisers discussed ways to limit the release of potentially embarrassing details from Bush's military records, a former senior officer of the Texas Guard said Wednesday." USA Today |
| "It's entirely possible that the full story of President Bush's service in the National Guard more than 30 years ago - again the subject of intense scrutiny - will never be told." Christian Science Monitor |
| The head of the UN nuclear watchdog has warned that the spread of atomic weapons technology could lead to the world's destruction. Reuters via NYT (reg/req) |
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| "The worst by far would seem to have been the Internet cannibal, though the beating and murder of a three-year old child whose father intended to crucify her, the videotaped torture of a high school student, the bludgeoning to death of a youth because he was wearing clothes that, his murderers felt, made him look like a Jew — these incidents too have lately made Germany appear to be a sort of European center for gothic crime, or at least a place of concentrated tabloid sensationalism." NYT(reg/req) |
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| "By the end of the year, humans are likely to ride a privately funded spaceship into suborbital space for the first time, an organizer of a competition encouraging such flights said Monday." USA Today |
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| "Al Qaeda sleeper cells are believed to be operating in 40 states, according to the FBI and other federal authorities, awaiting orders and funding for new attacks in the United States." The Washington Times |
| "Members of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks warned the White House on Monday that it could face a politically damaging subpoena this week if it refused to turn over information from the highly classified Oval Office intelligence reports given to President Bush before 9/11." AP via NYT (reg/req) |
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| "People who sleep about seven hours a night live the longest, three huge studies have found, the newest out in the February issue of the journal SLEEP." USA Today |
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| "From typewriters to vacuum tubes, these 10 technologies aren’t as obsolete as you might think." Technology Review |
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| "The White House has claimed credit for Libya's disarmament. Yesterday George Tenet claimed otherwise. Who's telling the truth?" The New Republic |
| "When Jay Hallen tried to step inside the building that once housed
the Baghdad Stock Exchange, squatters greeted him - with a gun. Finding
a new location quickly moved to the top of his agenda.
Mr. Hallen was hired by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to oversee the establishment of the new Iraq Stock Exchange, where trading is expected to start within a few weeks." Christian Science Monitor |
| "Thursday was a day that US Vice President Dick Cheney would like to forget in a hurry. First some Halliburton skeletons fell out of the closet, then questions were raised over his political ethics, and finally further questions were asked over his role in the weapons of mass destruction fiasco. What Cheney might forget, though, others in high places will not." Asia Times |
| "Even on these coldest nights of the year, Americans can't claim a right to adequate housing - not yet. But the notion that having a home is a basic human right is one that is gaining some currency around the globe, as well as on the corners of some of the most frigid cities in the United States." Christian Science Monitor |
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| "The most popular online humor-related Web sites for the week ending Jan. 25, as ranked by Nielsen//NetRatings. Audience is measured in thousands of unique visitors." Chicago Tribune (reg/req) |
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| "It's not something the Vatican or media outlets want to talk about, but for the past several years preparations for the pope's death have been moving along at a fast clip. Television networks from around the world have been caught in bidding wars for balconies that provide the prized shot of St. Peter's Square." On The Media from NPR |
| "There is no constitutional right allowing journalists to cover troops in a war zone, a U.S. appeals court in Washington ruled yesterday. The ruling came in a suit brought by publisher Larry Flynt and Hustler magazine over access to U.S. troops in Afghanistan." The Washington Times |
| "The U.S. military has asked South Korea to ban lap dancing and other lewd acts at local nightclubs near its bases, saying they negatively impact military discipline. The officials said the military was taking similar steps at other bases in the United States and overseas against lap dancing." World Tribune |
| "Dear Ralph - According to the latest news reports, you've pushed up your self-imposed deadline for announcing your decision about an independent 2004 presidential campaign from the end of January to mid-February. We're glad to hear that, because maybe it means you're still not sure about the best path to follow. For the good of the country, the many causes you've championed and for your own good name--don't run for President this year..." The Nation |
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| "A team of Russian and American scientists are reporting today that they have created two new chemical elements, called superheavies because of their enormous atomic mass. The discoveries fill a gap at the furthest edge of the periodic table and hint strongly at a weird landscape of undiscovered elements beyond." NYT(reg/req) |
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| "Kenneth M. Pollack, the author of 'Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong,' explains how the road to war with Iraq was paved with misleading and manipulated intelligence." The Atlantic |
| "The Federal Reserve left its key interest rate unchanged at 1% this week, and said it could still afford to be “patient” before raising rates. Although many economists do not expect the Fed to increase interest rates until next year, others argue America is now growing at such a clip that the Fed needs to touch the brakes to prevent inflation taking off again." The Economist |
| "Armed robbers raided a monastery in Brazil and made a priest swear on the Bible that there was no more money left on the premises." Ananova |
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| "Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who has made a fight against corporate special interests a centerpiece of his front-running campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, has raised more money from paid lobbyists than any other senator over the past 15 years, federal records show." Washington Post |
| Can Kerry can provide an exorcism for a generation of vets used to distrusting politicians? The Nation |
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| "Fidel Castro accused U.S. President George W. Bush on Friday of plotting with Miami exiles to kill him as part of his administration's hardening policies against the communist-run island." AP |
| "A suspected US fraudster on the run for a year has reportedly been caught after a woman checked his name on the Google website before meeting him for a date." BBC |
| "The economy of the United States will 'pay a penalty' next year when the White House's politically motivated growth boost runs out of steam, George Soros warned yesterday." The Independent |
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| "Obesity is so revered among Mauritania's white Moor Arab population that the young girls are sometimes force-fed to obtain a weight the government has described as 'life-threatening'." BBC |
| "Aiming to increase Internet security, the government is now offering
Americans free cyber alerts and computer advice from the Homeland Security
Department.
Anyone who signs up with the new National Cyber Alert System (www.us-cert.gov) will receive e-mails about major virus outbreaks and other Internet attacks as they occur, along with detailed instructions to help computer users protect themselves." AP |
| "The feeding frenzy over Dean's yell obscures the truth: he's still the same viable candidate that he was before." TomPaine.com |
| "Pakistani investigators have concluded that two senior nuclear scientists used a network of middlemen operating a black market to supply nuclear weapons technology to Iran and Libya, according to three senior Pakistani intelligence officials." Washington Post |
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| Survey finds college students increasingly interested in politics and hold right-wing views. USA Today |
| "A series of revelations shows that Saddam Hussein never posed a threat to the security of the United States. In a turn of events especially embarrassing to George W. Bush, a member of his own cabinet has exposed the Vice President as the secret ruler in the White House." Der Spiegel |
| "Maverick cosmologists contend that what we think of as the moment of creation was simply part of an infinite cycle of titanic collisions between our universe and a parallel world." Discover |
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| Things we learned en route to looking up other things: List of Texas Inmates' Last Meals. The Memory Hole |
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| TURRIALBA, Costa Rica — The game of baseball is a pure product of America.
The ball itself is another matter.
Every baseball used in the major leagues is made here, millions of them. They are handcrafted with the precision of a machine by the men and women of Turrialba and the towns in the green hills beyond. The baseball workers typically make about $2,750 a year. A baseball player in the United States makes, on average, about $2,377,000, the Players Association says. "It is hard work, and sometimes it messes up your hands, warps your fingers and hurts your shoulders," said Overly Monge, 37. Temperatures inside the factory can rise to 90 to 95 degrees, he said, and when they do, "we suffocate." He makes $55 a week after 13 years at the baseball factory, barely above Costa Rica's minimum wage. After he pays for the necessities of life, he has about $2 a day left over for himself, his wife and daughter. His salary, adjusted for inflation, is about the same as when he started. From theNYT(reg/req) |
| 52 Percent of Voters Don't Want to See Bush Re-Elected (44% Do), 37 Percent Strongly Want to See Him Re-Elected, 47 Percent Strongly Do Not. Newsweek |
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| Things we learned en route to looking up other things: Monopoly was devised a century ago by a Quaker, Lizzie Magie, as an instructive game against the inequalities of capitalism. For 30 years, it was a Quaker pastime. It was shown to a man named Charles Darrow, who in 1936 sold the rights to Parker Brothers Games. The History of the Monopoly Board |
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| "Just as the Pentagon is increasingly relying on the National Guard and other part-time troops for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, an internal Guard survey suggests that the demanding deployments could prompt a significant number of its soldiers to quit the military." USA Today |
| "The director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency said he is worried by the size of the black market for nuclear-related material." NYT(reg/req) |
| "Europe's Mars orbiter has detected new evidence of water on the planet, scientists at the European Space Agency announced today." AP via the NYT (reg/req) |
| "Although they drew the attention of only a few people rushing to lunch on a frigid January afternoon, more than 500 pairs of empty Army boots placed side-by-side Wednesday in downtown Chicago were a visible reminder of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq." AP |
| "Bob Keeshan, who gently entertained and educated generations of children as television's walrus-mustachioed Captain Kangaroo, died Friday at 76, his family said." Mr. Green Jeans, Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Moose are missed as well. AP |
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| "California is being hit hard by a recent nationwide shift of jobs
from high-paying industries to lower-paying sectors such as retail sales
and tourism, a trend that doesn't bode well for the economy, according
to a report released Wednesday.
The report by the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute paints a picture of a state and national economy in which employment growth is being driven largely by low-skilled service jobs." LA Times |
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| "The U.S. Marine Corps lawyer assigned to defend an Australian terror suspect being held at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba Wednesday criticized the military tribunal process and said it will not allow a fair trial." Reuters |
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| "Since Massachusetts' highest court ruled in November that gay couples have a right to marry under the State Constitution, Provincetown — a clamorous beach community known for its gay-friendly atmosphere and night life — has been gearing up for an unlikely windfall: the wedding business. Already one inn, the Fairbanks, is offering a $195 'Pop the Question" special.' NYT(reg/req) |
| "After seven years of debate, lawmakers moved closer Wednesday to passing a law that would bar Ohio from recognizing same-sex marriages and keep some state employees from getting benefits for their domestic partners." AP |
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| "Begin with Bush's exceptional life path. How did a fun-loving party animal and amiable but unremarkable governor bulk himself up to become a heavyweight presidential contender? How did a pampered scion of Northeastern citadels of privilege like Andover, Yale, and Harvard successfully repackage himself as an earthy Texas populist? How did such a famously inarticulate man so magnificently find the words to bind up the nation's wounds after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001? All these wondrous transformations suggest that Bush's biographers may well adopt a story line reminiscent of Shakespeare: the morphing of callow Prince Hal into the legendary monarch, Henry V." A Pulitzer Prize-winning author takes an early look at Bush's place in the American presidential pantheon - David M. Kennedy in the Christian Science Monitor. |
| "The Earth has entered a new era, one in which human beings may be the dominant force, say four environmental leaders...They believe humanity may cross some critical thresholds unawares, setting off changes which cannot be reversed." BBC |
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| "For generations the Noland family has led a troubled life on the Lummi
Indian reservation here. The Nolands have struggled with alcohol, painkillers
and, more recently, crack. Seven family members are now jailed, several
for dealing drugs, on and off tribal land.
Their experience has been repeated hundreds of times on this sprawling, desperately poor reservation of 2,000 Lummi, where addiction and crime have become pervasive. It is the reason that the Lummi tribe has turned as a last resort to a severe and bygone punishment, seeking to banish five of the young men in jail and another recently released." NYT(reg/req) |
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| "Savor those cosmic postcards while you can. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration decreed an early death yesterday to one of its flagship missions and most celebrated successes, the Hubble Space Telescope." NYT (reg/req) |
| New polls show that at a time of record deficits, the public is against
spending billions on a Mars mission while cutting domestic priorities.
Nonetheless, there is one company that has supported a Mars mission for
years: Halliburton. The company, which was headed by Vice President Dick
Cheney and is a major financial backer of the Administration, has long
supported funding a Mars plan because it is good for its drilling technology
business (it was also Cheney who spearheaded the Mars plan inside the White
House).
In fact, Kiplinger's reported back in 2001, "several companies and university labs will stand to benefit from new projects" in a Mars mission—including Halliburton. And the payoff could be big: Citizens Against Government Waste notes that, despite the White House's initial lowballing, legitimate "cost estimates for the new program range from $550 billion to $1 trillion." Four years ago, writing in the Oil & Gas Journal, Halliburton scientist Steve Streich pointed out why a Mars program would be so lucrative for Halliburton. He says a "Mars exploration program presents an unprecedented opportunity" for the industry and that it "warrants the support of both government and industry leaders." He says "one area of great importance is finding out of what the inside of Mars consists. That's where the petroleum industry comes in." Specifically, benefits for "the oil and gas industry may lie in technology that NASA will use for drilling into the surface of Mars." He says there is "great potential for a happy synergy between space researchers" on a Mars project and "the oil and gas industry." From TomPaine.com |
| "As the unrivaled global superpower, America exports its culture on an unprecedented scale. From music to media, film to fast food, language to literature and sport, the American idea is spreading inexorably, not unlike the influence of empires that preceded it." Christian Science Monitor |
| "Ahead of its most sensitive dispatch of troops abroad since World War II, the Japanese government has warned media not to "obstruct" its mission in Iraq or face a news blackout, a stance that has local critics fuming." Aljazeera |
| "The Economist's Big Mac index is based on the theory of “purchasing-power parity”. Under PPP, exchange rates should adjust to equalise the prices of a basket of goods and services across countries. Our basket is the Big Mac. For example, the cheapest burger is in China, at $1.23, compared with an average American price of $2.80. This implies the yuan is 56% undervalued. Relative to its Big Mac PPP the euro is 24% overvalued against the dollar. In contrast, the yen is 12% undervalued." |
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| "The commander of U.S. forces in Iraq has ordered a criminal investigation into reports of abuse of prisoners at an unspecified coalition detention center..." AP |
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| "The New York Daily News and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in Fort
Lauderdale are among the newspapers choosing not to run this Sunday's USA
Weekend after the magazine's editors revealed that a racial epithet had
been inadvertently embedded into the background of an illustration ...
The illustration uses text from an article previously published in The
New York Times Magazine as background. That included an exchange discussing
the problems with the racial epithet. The artist said he did not proofread
the selected text and was unaware it contained inflammatory language, USA
Weekend said." Editor
& Publisher
Note: The offending word reportedly appears as background text on the forehead of the character in the upper right-hand corner. After a not-so-painstaking examination of this image during our morning coffee, Hyde Park Media has discovered the word also appears in at least one other place - on the body of the character in the lower left-hand corner. You can check it out for yourself here. Use the zoom tool (link via Romenesko). |
| Kenneth Pollack, a key supporter of regime change in Iraq, now says the White House engaged in "creative omissions' about WMD. The Atlantic |
| The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, said on Wednesday that
terrorists would "quite probably" strike the United States again and that
Al Qaeda remained a major threat despite the lowering of the nation's threat
status last week.
"Al Qaeda would very much relish another high-profile attack within the United States in which numerous U.S. citizens would be killed," Mr. Mueller told reporters at a luncheon meeting sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor. "We have disrupted their capability, but there are still persons out there who have that capability." From the NYT(reg/req) |
| "About 3 million of Iraq's estimated 8.5 million unemployed live below the poverty line, and there are few prospects of work for them (nobody wants to collect trash, it seems) other than what is becoming inevitable: joining the resistance." Asia Times |
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| "At least three advanced diagnostic tests suggest that an experiment at the Brookhaven National Laboratory has cracked open protons and neutrons like subatomic eggs to create a primordial form of matter that last existed when the universe was roughly one-millionth of a second old..." NYT(reg/req) |
| The rise of digital devices could spell the end of film photography...Here's a web history of captured light from the pinhole to the Kodak DC40 from the UK Guardian. |
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| "As the world looks at Mars, an American scientist has produced the best images ever obtained from the surface of a rather different planet - Venus." BBC |
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Rank - Metro Area 1 - Tacoma, WA 2 - Miami, FL 3 - New Orleans, LA 4 - Las Vegas, NV-AZ 5 - New York, NY 6 - Portland-Vancouver, OR-WA 7 - Mobile, AL 8 - Stockton-Lodi, CA 9 - Detroit, MI 10 - Dallas, TX (our home town, Chicago, is ranked 26th - what a relief) Full study/list @ bestplaces.net |
| "For the doom merchants amongst us, 2004 showed its fearsome teeth in a cracking start before it was even 10 days old." BBC |
| "The Pew Hispanic Center estimated in 2001 that the unauthorized labor force in the United States totaled 5.3 million workers, including 700,000 restaurant workers, 250,000 household employees and 620,000 construction workers. In addition, about 1.2 million of the 2.5 million wage-earning farm workers live here illegally, according to a study by Philip L. Martin, a professor at the University of California at Davis who studies immigration and farm labor." NYT(reg/req) |
| "A new law has been passed in Cuba which will make access to the internet more difficult for Cubans." BBC |
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| "Some see mainly liberal university faculties as evidence of bias." Christian Science Monitor |
| Income distribution in the U.S. has gone right back to Gilded Age levels of inequality, says Paul Krugman in The Nation. |
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| "More than one-third of all species in several regions of the world are at risk of extinction by 2050 if global warming isn't controlled, says an international study out today." USA Today |
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| "Federal investigators plan to ask White House officials to release journalists from any pledge of confidentiality given during discussions about CIA operative Valerie Plame..." Washington Post |
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| "Pakistan has emerged as the intellectual and trading hub of a loose network of hidden nuclear proliferators." NYT(reg/req) |
| Zeitgeist: "the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era." Read it and weep @ Google. |
| "American soldiers, from privates to generals, say they believe that their fight to restore security and stability in Iraq is winnable in the long run, but that an American military presence will be required for years to keep the country from falling into chaos." NYT(reg/req) |
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| "Unemployed people (in the UK) with poor English and mathematics are to be forced to take courses to improve their skills or risk having their benefits cut." Independent |
| Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Friday he believes God has told him President Bush will be re-elected in a "blowout" in November. AP |
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| - Police in Oakland, California spent two hours attempting to subdue
a gunman who had barricaded himself inside his home. After firing ten tear
gas canisters, officers discovered that the man was standing beside them,
shouting to please come out and give himself up.
- An Illinois man pretending to have a gun kidnapped a motorist and forced him to drive to two different automated teller machines. The kidnapper then proceeded to withdraw money from his own bank accounts... - A man walked in to a Topeka, Kansas Kwik Shop, and asked for all the money in the cash drawer. Apparently, the take was too small, so he tied up the store clerk and worked the counter himself for three hours until police showed up and grabbed him. - Police in Los Angeles had good luck with a robbery suspect who just couldn't control himself during a lineup. When detectives asked each man in the lineup to repeat the words, "Give me all your money or I'll shoot," the man shouted, "That's not what I said!" Slinkycity.com |
| "Electronics of Christmas Past are coming back to haunt US landfillers." Christian Science Monitor |