RTFA: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071002/ts_afp/usiraq…

The US Senate Monday passed a mammoth 648 billion dollar defense policy bill

$648 Billion dollars… I have a really hard time wrapping my mind around that much money. I was recently reading about the B-2 bomber planes, which are ridiculously advanced technology. Apparently they cost $1.2 billion per plane. Maybe they just want 600 planes? For comparison, consider Sept. 11 cost only $500,000.

RTFA: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JP…

US President George Bush turned down an invitation to speak at Irans main university, Army Radio reported on Tuesday.

Don’t bother reading the article, the line above is the only one in the article! However, I linked to the article so you can verify it is credible information.

RTFA: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery?&Db=d110&que…

2. H.CON.RES.221 : Honoring all Americans serving in the Armed Forces of the United States and condemning the attack by broadcaster Rush Limbaugh on the integrity and professionalism of some of those
Americans.

Sponsor: Rep Udall, Mark [CO-2]
(introduced 10/1/2007) Cosponsors (19)
Committees: House Armed Services
Latest Major Action: 10/1/2007

Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the House Committee on Armed Services.

Seems the National Review article is a joke of a joke. If Lopez is really taking Think Progress’ “resolution” seriously, then there’s absolutely no evidence of it.

On the other hand, a separate resolution really was proposed… And lo, it can be fact-checked!

Sadly, it’s been referred to a committee. It clearly bombed, compared to the moveon.org ad.

RTFA: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODVmMmM3O…

Commending Rush Hudson Limbaugh III for his ongoing public support of American troops serving both here and abroad. Thanking Mr. Limbaugh for his relentless efforts to build and maintain troop morale through worldwide radio broadcasts and personal visits to conflict regions.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
OCTOBER 1, 2007
Mr. KINGSTON submitted the following resolution

RESOLUTION

Commending Rush Hudson Limbaugh III for his ongoing public support of American troops serving both here and abroad. Recognizing Mr. Limbaugh for his relentless efforts to build and maintain troop morale through worldwide radio broadcasts and personal visits to conflict regions.

Whereas the need to show support for American troops serving and fighting both here and abroad during a time of global conflict has never been greater, with the need to communicate an uplifting message of encouragement to American soldiers eternally important, in addition to the morale-boosting value of personal visits to region by highly-regarded individuals;

Whereas daily radio broadcasts reaching tens of millions of civilians and soldiers both in America and abroad by way of the Armed Forces Radio Network are conducted five days a week by Rush Hudson Limbaugh III;Whereas Mr. Limbaugh has consistently used his broadcast time to praise American troops and support them during their ongoing efforts to secure peace in a troubled world;

Whereas Mr. Limbaugh made a week-long visit to meet with troops based in Afghanistan in 2004;Whereas Mr. Limbaugh has raised and donated millions of dollars to the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, which provides college scholarships to the children of Marines and veterans of other branches killed in action;

Whereas Mr. Limbaugh’s website features an “Adopt a Soldier” program which provides them with free subscription access to his online program features;

Whereas during the original invasion in 2003, pilots of five different aircraft flew an American flag in Mr. Limbaugh’s honor during their bombing and refueling runs; and

Whereas Mr. Limbaugh’s commitment to American troops serving both here and abroad remains as strong as ever: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the House of Representatives -

(1) recognizes Rush Hudson Limbaugh III for his support of the Marine Corp Law Enforcement Foundation and for providing free subscriptions for active-duty servicemembers;

(2) recognizes Mr Limbaugh’s desire to see American troops achieve a successful outcome in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever soldiers are stationed; and

(3) commends Mr. Limbaugh’s tireless public support for American troops and their families through radio broadcasts, fundraising and other public support.

So, Think Progress might be pushing this as legit. It’s not. It’s strange that this has gotten so far without anyone fact-checking. Is NRO the original source? “The Corner” seems to have grabbed this about 45 minutes after Think Progress claims it “really happened.” Is there ANY source for this?

…Because clearly the resolution wasn’t filed with the Library of Congress.

I’m laughing. The joke is how evidently self-aware this delusion/reality-distortion-field has become. The joke is in how absurd you can make the statements.

RTFA: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/do-you-write…

You might think your anonymous online rants are oh-so-clever.   But they’ll give you away, too.  A federally-funded artificial intelligence lab is figuring out how to track people over the Internet, based on how they write.

The University of Arizona’s ultra-ambitious “Dark Web” project “aims to systematically collect and analyze all terrorist-generated content on the Web,” the National Science Foundation notes.  And that analysis, according to the Arizona Star, includes a program which “identif[ies] and track[s] individual authors by their
writing styles.”

No comment.

RTFA: http://www.unsecureflight.com/request.html

The Department of Homeland Security already knows everything about your travel.  Now, for the first time, The Identity Project makes it easy for you to request the unclassified parts of the dossier that the DHS has complied on you.

Warning:  You can only request records on behalf of yourself or others with their written explicit permission.  There are severe penalties for making requests for records on someone else without their knowledge.

Are you prepared to find out for yourself the outrageous amount of personal information Homeland Security has been vacuuming-up on you?  This is how to do it

Warning: access of records highly suggests you are a terrorist.

RTFA: http://www.alphagalileo.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=r…

“For the first time ever, animals are now being exposed to an unmitigated space environment, with both vacuum conditions and cosmic radiation,” says the ecologist Ingemar Jönsson, a researcher at Kristianstad University in Sweden. One of the aims of sending the tiny tardigrades into space is to find out whether they can cope with the rugged conditions in space, which has previously been predicted but never tested. Tardigrades are one of the most tolerant animals on earth when it comes to dehydration and radiation, a characteristic that would be required in order to survive a trip through space. But the project is also part of research into the fundamental physiology of the tardigrade, primarily of the mechanisms that underlie their ability to withstand desiccation.

Insane, creepy, invincible bugs… into space! To colonice other planets!

RTFA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7HCIGFdBt8

Great footage of fighting giraffes. gets pretty vicious at times. Filmed on safari in Tanzania

Hahaha! They use their skulls!

RTFA: http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2007/09/international-u.h…

And as with most real world protests, this one also attracted off-message sign-wavers. For instance, I asked this humanoid stack of square discs what Korea had to with the strike.

Internet!

RTFA: http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2007-09-27-ch…

He’s now got a human name � Matthew Hiasl Pan � but he’s having trouble getting his day in court.
Animal rights activists campaigning to get Pan, a 26-year-old chimpanzee, legally declared a person vowed Thursday to take their challenge to Austria’s Supreme Court after a lower court threw out their latest appeal.
A provincial judge in the city of Wiener Neustadt dismissed the case this week, ruling the Vienna-based Association Against Animal Factories has no legal standing to argue on the chimp’s behalf.
The legal tussle began in February, when the animal shelter where Pan and another chimp, Rosi, have lived for 25 years filed for bankruptcy protection.

Definitions! It’s not like, “it thinks so it’s a person.” It’s more like: people can think; what else thinks?

Freud could think. I say we try to legally reclassify the chimp as “Sigmund Freud.”

RTFA: http://www.poketo.com/hello/superlocal/?p=327

came dusted with a fine cheese powder, a bit like the stuff you find on Twisties.
quite yum, like a one super long deep fried crisp!

have seen it in Hongdae & Myeongdong but am it’s in loads of other places.

RTFA: http://blog.wired.com/defense/2007/09/omg-navy-cal…

The MySpace generation is a “somewhat alien life force,” a Navy recruiting presentation contends — with a language and lifestyle that’s almost unrecognizable to adults.  And because the kids are such “coddled,” “narcissistic praise junkies,” they’ll be beyond tough to bring into the military.  Propensity to join the armed forces among these so-called “millennials” has dropped to as little as 3%; that’s down from 26% in 2001. 

Entropic Memes uncovered the bleak, often unintentionally hilarious report from the Annual Navy Workforce Research and Analysis Conference, which also glumly notes that the Iraq war has brutalized recruiting efforts.   Up to two-thirds of millennials are “less likely to join the military” because of the war, according to the presentation.

They don’t speak right, but it makes it faster to type while they’re playing the murder simulator.

A: headshot
B: LOL

RTFA: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070928/ap_on_he_me/ki…

According to the CDC, the amoeba called Naegleria fowleri (nuh-GLEER-ee-uh FOWL’-erh-eye) killed 23 people in the United States, from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials noticed a spike with six cases — three in Florida, two in Texas and one in Arizona. The CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.
In Arizona, David Evans said nobody knew his son, Aaron, was infected with the amoeba until after the 14-year-old died on Sept. 17. At first, the teen seemed to be suffering from nothing more than a headache.
“We didn’t know,” Evans said. “And here I am: I come home and I’m burying him.”
After doing more tests, doctors said Aaron probably picked up the amoeba a week before while swimming in the balmy shallows of Lake Havasu, a popular man-made lake on the Colorado River between Arizona and California.

Be afraid. This kills an average of nearly 2 people per year!

It’s interesting that it’s so difficult to kill amoebas. I expect this has something to do with our evolutionary similarity.

You heard me. BTW: don’t get infected by a fungus, either.

RTFA: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdI_MmN-Lp4

A Scientific look into the brain

Now here’s some cognitive science!

RTFA: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,298956,00.html

A former top lawyer for the Bush administration on Tuesday said that parts of the President Bush’s controversial eavesdropping program were illegal.

There were certain aspects of the Terrorist Surveillance Program “that I could not find the legal support for,” Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

But he would not say exactly what law or constitutional principle the surveillance violated. Goldsmith said the White House has forbidden him from saying anything about the legal analysis underpinning the program — key details long sought by majority Democrats and some Republicans.

I can’t believe I found this on Fox News

RTFA: http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/10/02/presidentia…

In a narrowly crafted ruling, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly invalidated part of President Bush’s 2001 executive order, which allowed former presidents and vice presidents to review executive records before they are released under the Freedom of Information Act.

RTFA: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071002/wl_mideast_af…

Israel lifted its official veil of silence over last month’s strike in Syria on Tuesday as army radio said that the Jewish state carried out the attack deep inside its arch foe’s territory.

The Israeli military censor lifted a blackout on publishing the information on the September 6 strike, in which Syria had said its air defences fired on Israeli warplanes that dropped ammunition deep inside its territory.

“The military censor has authorised for the first time the publication of the fact that Israeli combat planes attacked a military target deep inside Syrian territory on September 6,” the radio said.

“It is the only element that the censor allowed to be published,” it added.

This is an intriguing story. It’s obviously a big NO-NO to attack a country. In fact, this is definitely justification for Syria to attack Israel, if not a declaration of war from Israel. What I find particularly interesting is Israel’s refusal to say what they hit and Syria’s denial that they hit anything important (highly unlikely).

RTFA: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071002/ap_on_he_me/mi…

American laboratories handling the world’s deadliest germs and toxins have experienced more than 100 accidents and missing shipments since 2003, and the number is increasing steadily as more labs across the country are approved to do the work.

No one died, and regulators said the public was never at risk during these incidents. But the documented cases reflect poorly on procedures and oversight at high-security labs, some of which work with organisms and poisons so dangerous that illnesses they cause have no cure.

Hopefully we don’t get an anus & eye outbreak in America.

Originally uploaded by Frauenfelder

I feel like a pirate because I’m wearing a pirate shirt.