Happy Birthday to me...

Yes I'm 34, and boy, do I feel old.

Andrea organized a birthday dinner for me in Palo Alto, and I got to see some old friends from the newspaper. The dinner was great -- a little Italian place we'd never heard of -- with an odd mixture of Brazilians and Americans. Concidentally, there was another American with a Brazilian significant. She's from Phoenix, went to ASU and knows a good friend of mine from school. Small planet.

Why Bush's intellectual curiosity matters

Warning in Iraq Report Unread

President Bush and his national security adviser did not entirely read the most authoritative prewar assessment of U.S. intelligence on Iraq, including a State Department claim that an allegation Bush would later use in his State of the Union address was "highly dubious," White House officials said yesterday.

Remember the notion during the '00 campaign that it didn't matter whether Bush was studious, or even smart? Now it seems his so-called leadership -- or the thoughtless, unquestioning self-confidence that passes for it -- got us into an expensive war we didn't need to start.

Car Plows Through Crowd in Santa Monica, Killing 9

Car Plows Through Crowd in Santa Monica, Killing 9

Yes, this is a big story. But 50 reporters (yes, I counted) to cover it? That's more than they had covering the Iraq war!

Breakable

Orbitz blames Oracle for site outage

What he said

War, lies and yellowcake

"My sense is, they really did believe they were going to find WMDs, and that it was therefore okay to lie about it beforehand, because they knew they’d ultimately be vindicated. Of course, they also thought they could just install Ahmed Chalabi as some sort of Presidential Puppetman and retreat into the sunset to a soundtrack of cheering Iraqi throngs. This is what happens when you have CEO’s running a government like a business: no one around them is in a position to tell them that they are living in a fantasy world. And when reality fails to conform to their fantasies, they are perhaps the most shocked of all."

It all depends how you define "intelligence"

President defends intelligence team

No, it's not just about 16 little words

20 Lies About the War

CIA got uranium mention cut in Oct.

CIA got uranium mention cut in Oct.

It gets better and better.

Bush says uranium controversy closed

Sure it is. Of course, even if his PR nightmare were over, he still needs to explain his lies about the aluminum tubes, al-Queda ties and most importantly, weapons of mass destuction. That's why we went to war, remember? Because Iraq was such an imminent threat.

Maybe he's not a goner

Bush Says He Has Faith in CIA Director

Of course, you have to wonder about an agency that failed to see 9-11 and helped start a bogus war in the same administration.

Tenet's a goner

CIA director takes responsibility for incorrect information in State of the Union address

The Republicans are in charge #6

House backs overtime pay changes

Jobless claims rise unexpectedly

Yes, last year's tax cuts are working like magic. Can't wait for the new ones to kick in.

White House backs off claim about uranium buy

Oops, our bad.

The Bush recovery continues...

Jobless Rate Rises to 6.4 Percent; Highest in More Than 9 Years

Like Bush said: he's a uniter, not a divder

Power Moves May Be Uniting Hard-Liners in Iraq and Iran

U.S.: Banned arms evidence in Iraq

Before the Republicans get too excited: "U.S. OFFICIALS said the discoveries were not proof that Iraq had managed to build or obtain banned weapons of mass destruction, as President Bush asserted before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March. But they said the materials, some of which dated back to the first Gulf War, were compelling proof that Saddam was trying actively to acquire such weapons in defiance of the United Nations."

In other words, inspections and sactions were doing the job.

Labels aim big guns at small file swappers

Telling quote of the article: "Go in the stores and buy the records."

You'd think after Napster, Kazza and iTunes, the recording industry would get it through their heads that people don't want to "go in the stores." They want their music online. And as someone who just cancelled his subscription to Pressplay, most of the music isn't online, leagally anyway.

Arizona wildfire grows by a third.

Fortunately, the fire is threatening only vacation homes and the UofA.

KensAwesomeCalc, version 2.01

I fixed a rounding bug. After two hours of taking the mathematical approach (adding .5 to the result and truncating) and trying to figure out why I couldn't add a fraction to a decimal, I finally did a Google search and discovered this magical little function in C# called System.Math.Round.

Heh.