Olbermann: "Your words are lies, Sir...."

"...They are lies, that imperil us all."

"And if you somehow think Habeas Corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an "unlawful enemy combatant" — exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this Attorney General is going to help you?"

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/10/18/countdown-special-comment-death-of-habeas-corpus-your-words-are-lies-sir/

robot swarms: "better together"

heh heh heh...

http://hardware.slashdot.org/hardware/06/10/18/1756237.shtml

(Sorry, that phrase just keeps popping up: at work, in Google blog postings about their own products...)

Peter Gabriel: shock the monkey again

http://slashdot.org/articles/06/10/19/0153200.shtml

he is actually encouraging people to not only download his music, but also adapt it into something more modern. In doing so, he actually posted a sample pack of Shock the Monkey consisting of vocals and other pieces of the original multitrack recording.

You can find the competition website itself at http://www.realworldremixed.com/competition.php . I look forward to checking some of these out. (The version involving a violin and music from "Carmen" is particularly intriguing: http://www.realworldremixed.com/remix.php?remix_id=ylLHEGG4nSER6DTD)

Releasing a track for remixing is not a new idea, but it's still kind of cool.

metamaterials: fluff or real science?

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1020/p02s01-stss.html

Haven't managed to find any other news articles on this. The claims made seem to be rather extravagant; anyone know anything about this?

dude. uranium-using bacteria.

http://science.slashdot.org/science/06/10/20/0625206.shtml

"The colony does it by relying on radioactive uranium to split water into hydrogen gas. Thus, instead of solar energy and photosynthesis, this species relies on radioactive materials and sulfur/hydrogen to facilitate its energy needs."

Wacky.

article on Weird Al

http://www.slate.com/id/2151657/?GT1=8702

Interesting anAlysis.

I don't want to get too wound up in Iraq vs. Viet Nam comparisons...

...since most of them tend to devolve to "is not!" "is too!" as if that were really the most important point (as opposed, to, say, trying to decide what we should be doing about the situation).

However, these are a couple of thoughtful articles (by the same author) that are worth reading.

http://www.time.com/time/world/printout/0,8816,1548897,00.html

http://tonykaron.com/2005/08/03/why-iraq-is-not-vietnam/


On a related note, this article seems to suggest that the militias aren't going anywhere, mostly because there's a perception among many Iraqis that they're the only ones that can really provide any kind of order, or at least protection:

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/15805850.htm

wasn't it supposed to be "innocent until proven guilty"

rather than the other way around?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-061018immig,1,5681999.story?coll=chi-news-hed

"We're going to seize your money, until and unless you can prove that it _was_ legitimately yours and not connected with any crime."

Remind me not to use Western Union to transfer money. (I'm glad to see that they're also suing over this, though.)