Civil war in Iraq possible, generals say:
Under questioning by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Pace said he did not anticipate one year ago that Iraq would now be in danger of descending into civil war.Funny. Everyone else seemed to anticipate it. Well, almost everyone.
According to the report, in addition to threatening the arresting deputy and trying to escape, Gibson said, "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world," and asked the officer, James Mee, "Are you a Jew?"
From MSNBC: Iran president bans usage of foreign words
Another similarity between conservative Republicans and fundamentalist Islamists.
Nope, it's definitely hot.
With temperatures reaching 104 degrees Fahrenheit today, I had to resort to some Arizona-style cooling techniques, including sealing off the air-conditioned living room from the rest of the apartment and sleeping on the couch, spending the day at an air-conditioned bookstore and the old standby, the cold shower.
From BuzzMachine:
Then she said that news is “an industry with a lot of oversupply that is now exposed.” I liked that hard economic talk about the business. It reminds us that we are an industry and need to reexamine our business assumptions like every other industry.Some good points here. As much as I hate to admit it, I think this probably goes for tech writers, too.
So maybe the problem with journalism today isn’t that there are too few reporters and and editors but too many. I’ve talked before about the foolishness of sending 15,000 reporters to the political conventions, about papers sending TV critics to junkets or golf writers to tournaments. Inside the newsroom, too, there are overwrought processes. Meanwhile, of course, revenue is sinking and staff will follow.
Buy A Customized Jessica Simpson MP3 At Yahoo! Music
No, I'm not talking about the song itself, but the idea that a major music service is considering selling music not crippled by "digital rights management" software.
Brookstone Weed Burner
Product Description
Eliminate weeds quickly and permanently with a propane-fired weed burner. Use this lightweight burner to clear weeds and their roots in driveways or walkways in summer, or to melt dangerous ice patches in winter. Adjustable regulator valve lets you control flame intensity
Interesting story about Super Mario Bros. 2, the oddest game in the franchise. As it turns out, Nintendo had created a different Mario sequel but found it too hard for U.S. audiences. So it Mario-ized a completely different game called Doki Doki Panic and sold it as Part Duex.
Personally, I never liked the version they released in the U.S. It felt too different and was just, well, weird -- at least in terms of the Mario universe.
About.com has a long-overdue review of the real Super Mario Bros. 2.
From the New York Times:
Study Documents ‘Ghetto Tax’ Being Paid by the Urban Poor - New York Times
Drivers from low-income neighborhoods of New York, Hartford and Baltimore, insuring identical cars and with the same driving records as those from middle-class neighborhoods, paid $400 more on average for a year’s insurance.
The poor are also the main customers for appliances and furniture at “rent to own” stores, where payments are stretched out at very high interest rates; in Wisconsin, a $200 television can end up costing $700.
Those were just two examples among several cited in a report Tuesday showing that poor urban residents frequently pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year in extra costs for everyday necessities. The study said some of the disparities were due to real differences in the cost of doing business in poor areas, some to predatory financial practices and some to consumer ignorance.
Do not take advantage of a hired man who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother Israelite or an alien living in one of your towns.And there's plenty more where that came from.
Move around and live longer, study says:
CHICAGO - Elderly people who load the dishwasher, climb stairs or just keep moving are bound to live longer than their sedentary counterparts, a study said on Tuesday.Actually, the message here is that too many journalists fail to grasp the difference between correlation and causation, and too few educated people understand the scientific method.
The study of 302 people aged 70 to 82 found those who engaged in more physical activity -- ?not necessarily formal exercise --? were much less likely to die than those who did not move as much.
"The message here is that for older adults, any movement is better than no movement and that this can come from usual daily activities," said study author Todd Manini of the U.S. National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Maryland.
This new keyboard from Microsoft looks promising. It's wireless, recharchable, has a sensor that knows when to backlight the keys (like most Apple laptops) and another sensor that lets it know when you're away so it can save power.
The only thing missing -- and I hate to keep harping on this -- is a volume knob. What could be more intuitive for multimedia keyboards?
After reinstalling Windows XP on my home PC, I realized that I'd need to relicense music I bought a couple of years ago from MusicMatch. Problem is, Yahoo bought the company last year and no longer offers the music player I need to retrieve the license. Yahoo's new "Music Engine" won't relicense it either. So through no fault of my own, I need to re-purchase the album. You can bet that it won't be at another online store.
This is why so-called Digital Rights Management absolutely stinks. Where are MY rights to the music?
This is a little reassuring after installing the slow and extremely buggy Beta 2. I understand that it's a beta and all, but the first public release of Windows XP a few years ago (a half-decade, actually) was much more polished and stable than this monstrosity. I hope Microsoft makes build 5456 publicly available soon, because I'm ready to ditch Vista and reinstall XP.
Actual Reuters headline, as posted to MSNBC:
LOS ANGELES - Rock producer Phil Spector will go on trial in January on charges of killing a B-movie actress to death at his home, nearly four years after the fatal shooting took place, a judge said Friday.I imagine it'll be fixed before most of you read this.
Box.net, a slick, free online storage and sharing site, has unofficially added Webdav support. That means you can put online folders right on your desktop, as if they were local files. In other words, downloading and uploading become a simple matter of dragging and dropping.
Box.net gives you a gigabyte for free and 5 gigabytes for $5 a month.
Now the question: why am I still paying $3 per month to MyDocsOnline for 50 megs?
I just got word from my boss that reporters here may have to start blogging officially for the newspaper. Ugh.
The problem with newspaper blogs -- aside from being totally pointless in a media setting -- is that most aren't really blogs at all. Free of opinion, heavily edited and devoid of all spunk, most end up reading like half-baked news briefs. Let's hope IBD is willing to take some risks and do something really interesting with these.
