LA LA LA I Can't Hear you... LA LA

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/25/1854231&from=rss

"The White House told E.P.A. officials that it would not open an e-mail sent in December that argued that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled."

Shame.

Kansas! Again!

http://www.kwch.com/Global/story.asp?s=6731396

"Then the girl says two friends left the room, leaving her alone with the boy who she says had been her friend up until then. She says he forced himself on her. The girl says she told her school counselor about it a month later.

"I wanted help because it was my first time and I was scared," she says.

The counselor went to police and before long this girl who was 14 at the time, was being charged with raping the boy who was a few months younger and still 13 years old. Kansas law says sex with anyone under 14, even if it's consensual, is rape. Deciding to actually prosecute a child in this situation is another matter."

Olympics

"NBC Universal hopes to transform your Olympics viewing experience via an ambitious Web strategy that includes more than 2200 hours of live streaming video (with the option of viewing up to four streams at once) and interactive data to help you move smoothly between text such as athletes' biographies and video of their performance."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/19/nbc-to-stream-2200-hours_n_107986.html

Maybe, maybe, finally, there will be actual coverage of the Olympics, which we haven't had in decades?

Maybe... Let's not get our hopes though.

Kid Rock Says

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/06/kid-rock-boycot.html

"He advises fans to download his music for free from P2P services, although he himself doesn't have to. "I don't steal things," he told the BBC. "I'm rich." As for everyone else, he says, "Download it illegally, I don't care. I want you to hear my music so I can play live."

"Rock's tirade was apparently precipitated by a request from his record label, Warner Music Group's Atlantic Records, that he publicly denounce file sharing. His response: "Wait a second, you've been stealing from the artists for years. Now you want me to stand up for you?" Ouch."

Religious People Stupid as Ever

http://news.opb.org/article/2367-sixteen-year-old-followers-christ-member-dies/

"A religious sect that relies on prayer to heal its members, has seen another of its youngsters die"

Stupid People Believe

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=402381&c=2

"Belief in God is much lower among academics than among the general population because scholars have higher IQs, a controversial academic claimed this week."

File under "Not Exactly Shocking"...

Crooks

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5031587&page=1

"White House officials appeared as comfortable going to Abramoff and his lobbyists seeking tickets to sporting and entertainment events, as they did seeking input on personnel picks for plum jobs, the report found."

Does anyone care? Probably not. Afterall the President would never misrepresent the truth right? "The Media" must be wrong, yet again... Ya, that must be it. Over and over and over. It's "The Media".

LA! LA! LA! I can't hear you! LA! LA! LA!

President Bush Tells Me We Don't Torture

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=6ecab625-9b8f-45a5-88ee-e96a23e90ecc

"A formerly secret document shows the Pentagon allowed its Guantanamo Bay interrogators to destroy notes they took of interrogations - a policy Omar Khadr's lawyers say denies them the chance to challenge the legitimacy of any "confessions" he made.

"The prosecution has handed over only a handful of handwritten notes of interrogations of Khadr in Guantanamo, where he has said he underwent abuse that included rape threats and being used as a mop to clean the floor of urine."

More and More Shame

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7444406.stm

"Mr Masri says his case is an example of the US policy of "extraordinary rendition" - a practice whereby the US government flies foreign terror suspects to third countries without judicial process for interrogation or detention.

"He says he was kidnapped in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, in 2003, flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan, nicknamed the "salt pit" and tortured there.

"On his flight to Afghanistan, he says, he was stripped, beaten, shackled, made to wear nappies and drugged.

"Mr Masri says he was finally released in Albania five months later after the CIA realised they had got the wrong man."

Idiots

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/angry-clinton-s.html

"Some Clintonites are so mad about Barack Obama's Tuesday victory that they've launched a web site to build support to launch a lobbying group to support Republican John McCain."

Elections are a contest. Someone wins and someone loses. If these fools are so angry that their candidate didn't get enough votes that they want to support McCain, then that tells me that they did not have any good reason to support Clinton in the first place.

No one with any understanding of of where current events, politics, and the Republicans, are today could possibly move from supporting Clinton to supporting McCain. Unless of course they are no different from the unthinking, ignorant, knee-jerk right wing-kooks that support Republican blank checks, blindly, no matter what - no different that the people that gave us George W. Bush.

Wow, people are stupid.

Inflatable

http://www.physorg.com/news131804347.html

"It's hard to say what the most intriguing thing about XP Vehicles' inflatable car is. Maybe it's that the car can travel for up to 2,500 miles on a single electric charge (the distance across the US is roughly 3,000 miles).

"Or maybe it's the fact that you buy the car online, it gets shipped to you in two cardboard boxes, and the estimated assembly time is less than two hours. Perhaps it's that the car is made out of "airbags" - the same polymer materials used to cushion NASA's rovers when they landed on Mars. Then again, it could be the company's claim that you can drive the car off a cliff without serious injury, and that it will float in a flood or tsunami."

Air Travel

The terrorist got what they wanted - air travel is no longer practical. This one traveler's story is well worth reading.

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN2834050020080529?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews

"Richard Roth, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of himself and his mother, said he planned the Christmas 2007 trip to Buenos Aires to celebrate his mother's 80th birthday. She had grown up in the city, but had not returned in years, he said.

"Instead, Roth, his two teenage children, his wife and mother spent three days in airports, went days without their luggage, were treated rudely by airline employees and were forced to spend $21,000 on unused hotel rooms in Argentina, replacement clothes, and other costs.

"Through its gross negligence, malfeasance and absolute incompetence, Mr. Roth holds Delta responsible for ruining his vacation," said the lawsuit, filed in New York state court."

This is also another good example of the breakdown of market forces. Airline companies are actually not capable of providing an acceptable level of basic service to all their customers, at current rates. Instead, they are feeling around at the bottom right now, the find the point at which the horrible experience of a certain percentage fails, not to reduce the customer base, but to avoid any new federal law. Airline people will admit this from time to time. They have learned that their customer will select the lowest fare. Always, no matter what. Offering an improved experience, at an additional cost, has been tried, and failed, by several airlines a number of times.