...when ThinMan is going to update CuppaJoe. It's been, like, a year. Sadly, no new entrants to the Hall of Shame.

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Some Norlosers (how are the T-shirts coming, hellx?) may have noticed an upswing in the total funk-tacity of the universe in the last 24 hours or so. There is a reason. I woke up yesterday with a need for biscuits and gravy.

Big Daddy's been advertising the new breakfast menu. Having seen Big Daddy, I had full faith in his ability to give me the real southern goodness. On a side note, Big Daddy also passes the "pile of wood and smoker out back of the building" test for competent BBQ. Unfortunately, Big Daddy doesn't start serving breakfast until after 11. So I made do with a more refined version at the Utopia Cafe. Good, but not Truck Stop Good, if you know what I mean.

Then, after letting that settle (or is it absorb?) for an hour or so, I busted out my new Professor Longhair songbook on our new digital piano (thank you, tax cut). It's pretty sweet. I can now work on my 17-minute version of "Innagaddadaveeda" on the church organ, play "Amazing Grace" on jazz organ, or bust out "Let It Be" with vibraphone and choir. But today it was all 'Fess. Sure, right now I don't understand how it's possible to move my hands around like that. And yes, I actually had to practice the rhythm without even playing notes, 'cuz I swear you would never figure out what it sounded like from the sheet music. And he plays so fast (the book is all transcription from albums, so I can actually listen along) that one 4-beat measure takes 2 1/2 lines of staff. But some day, I'll be able to play one of his songs, as long as arthritis doesn't set in first. I have found my purpose!

When my hands got tired, I popped in SpeakerBoxx/Love Below. I know, I'm a little behind, but I just bought it for my birthday. You know, I wanted to be a Love Below guy, but really, I'm into the SpeakerBoxx.

Then, after a trip to see Shrek 2 (funny) I cajoled Rebecca into joining me for a now traditional Memorial Day weekend run to the casino. In honor of Professor Longhair's brief career as professional card player (after boxing but before janitor) I lost $20. Got back to town around 2, so we stopped in Voodoo Doughnuts to end the day with a fresh glazed and then to bed.

You never know where a fixin' for biscuits and gravy will take a man.

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How do we know? Because Jebus' bass has a new set of strings. Last time this happened, we were all still showering together.

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So Gene Simmons of KISS has ignited a controversy over his comments about Muslims:

"This is a vile culture and if you think for a second that it's willing to just live in the sands of God's armpit you've got another thing coming," Simmons said during an interview on Melbourne's 3AW radio.

"They want to come and live right where you live and they think that you're evil."

My question: If the words coming out of his mouth aren't "I wanna rock 'n' roll all night/and par-tee ev-er-ee day," who the fuck cares what he says?

Visit the Official KISS Army Sweden homepage. And check out what Jason Schwartzman says about the KISS Army to the Onion:

The Onion: Who could you take in a fight?

Jason Schwartzman: I don't know. Name someone.

O: Gene Simmons? He's kind of a big guy, though.

JS: Yeah, with a little help from my friends, I could take him. But he's also got the KISS Army behind him. He never shuts up about the fucking KISS Army.

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So who's that delicate wallflower smack in the center of this photo quietly celebrating his graduation? That would be BigPants, a new member, and known to many of us here as the KU Stud. Welcome aboard, BigPants.

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Nascar may come to New York City, even as it leaves the Carolinas.

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Roundabout harnesses the power of children to provide water to the communities of South Africa.

via via.

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Ya gotta dream, baby.

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A recent study has found that 1 out of every 75 U.S. males is in prison. Some people worry that the U.S. is incarcerating too many people, others, like John Ashcroft, says Americans are safer because all the criminals are in jail. All I can think about is the fact that all those people in prison must be a terrible drag on the economy.

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Check out Noam Scheiber's New Republic piece on Barack Obama.

Read the Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker article mentioned by Scheiber here.

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The Wall Street Journal had this quote from a source in the FBI:

"A lot of the analysis points to the fact that al-Qaida is likely to be emboldened because of the Madrid rail bombing and the fact that event changed the election there."

Most commentary that you hear today assumes that Al Qaeda would work to defeat George Bush and the goal of any terrorist attack would be to undermine Bush. This line of reasoning essentially damns Kerry as the candidate supported by Al Qaeda.

While I generally do not have much respect for the intelligence of religious fundamentalists, Al Qaeda seems mroe intelligent than most. Right now, in Islamic countries are focused at George Bush and, by extension, the U.S. If the U.S. people were to vote out George Bush, this could dilute the anger towards the U.S. since we would have removed the person ultimately responsible for invading Iraq and the torture at Abu Ghraib.

The most effective way for Al Qaeda to continue stoking hatred towards the U.S. is for George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, et al. to remain in power. If the American people re-elect Bush et al., then we will be complicit in their crimes. I think Al Qaeda is aware of the tendency of Americans to "rally round the flag" when under distress. As a result, I think if we see a terrorist attack before the election, it will come if Bush falls behind Kerry in the polls.

Update: Timothy Noah from Slate reached the same conclusion: if Osama bin Laden wants you to vote for anybody, it's Bush.

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Clink Magazine had an article last year that does a great job of capturing the feeling of the Murder City Devils and how sad it is that they're no longer among us. You can check out an entire Devils show at Supersphere.

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Carl's Jr.(R) Introduces the Biggest Burger in Fast Food History

CARPINTERIA, Calif., May 26 /PRNewswire/ -- If you want to indulge in a big, delicious, juicy burger and also feel the burn of working your biceps, look no further than Carl's Jr. Introducing The 1 lb. Double Six Dollar Burger(TM), the newest addition to the award-winning Six Dollar Burger(TM) line, that is certain to literally crush the competition in taste and size.

"Carl's Jr. has had the largest variety of premium quality Angus burgers in the industry, and now we also offer the biggest," said Brad Haley, executive vice president of marketing for Carl's Jr. "The 1 lb. Double Six Dollar Burger was designed specifically for our core hungry, young guy target audience, which can't seem to get enough of a really good burger."

The 1 lb. Double Six Dollar Burger features two 1/2-pound charbroiled, 100-percent Angus beef patties topped with three slices of American cheese, bread-and-butter pickles, red onions, lettuce, tomatoes, ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise -- all on a toasted, seeded bun. The result is a tasty mega-burger that requires two hands, a firm grip, a serious appetite -- and many napkins.

Participating Carl's Jr. restaurants will begin selling The 1 lb. Double Six Dollar Burger on Wednesday, May 26. The suggested retail price is $5.49.

The Six Dollar Burger was introduced in July 2001 and became one of the most successful new products in the quick-service restaurant industry. In 2002, Restaurant Business magazine awarded The Six Dollar Burger the coveted Silver Skillet Award for product innovation. In addition to the new 1 lb. Double Six Dollar Burger, Carl's Jr.'s full line of Six Dollar Burgers includes: The original Six Dollar Burger, The Guacamole Bacon Six Dollar Burger(TM), The Western Bacon Six Dollar Burger(TM), The Bacon Cheese Six Dollar Burger(TM), The Chili Cheese Six Dollar Burger(TM) and the Low Carb Six Dollar Burger(TM).

Coinciding with the introduction of The 1 lb. Double Six Dollar Burger, Carl's Jr. will be debuting a new addition to its low carbohydrate menu options, the Low Carb Charbroiled Chicken Club(TM), along with two new entree salads, the BBQ Ranch Charbroiled Chicken Salad(TM) and the Mandarin Charbroiled Chicken Salad(TM).

Carl's Jr. is a wholly owned subsidiary of CKE Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE: CKR) of Carpinteria, Calif. As of the end of its 2004 fiscal year on January 26, 2004, CKE Restaurants, through its subsidiaries, had a total of 3,250 franchised or company-owned restaurants in 44 states and in 14 countries, including 1,006 Carl's Jr.(R) restaurants, 2,121 Hardee's(R) restaurants and 102 La Salsa Fresh Mexican Grill(R) restaurants. For more information, or to find a Carl's Jr. near you, go to www.ckr.com or www.carlsjr.com. SOURCE Carl's Jr.

/NOTE TO EDITORS: Photo of The 1 lb. Double Six Dollar Burger(TM) is available upon request./
/CONTACT: Christie Cooney of CKE Restaurants, Inc., +1-805-745-7740, ccooney@ckr.com; or Sona Balanian, +1-310-407-6535,

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Has this ever happened to you: your favorite indie song, that you one you love to sing along with, comes on but you're pretty sure that the lyrics that you're singing aren't the right lyrics? Then Indie Lyrics is for you. And by you, I mean me.

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Vance Lassey and my sister are now officially Doctors of Medicine.

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Meet Jessica Cutler. She's got a pretty if angular face and is an alumna of a school we all hate. Right, Hellx? She likes to party. She knows powerful people. And she says things like "a man who tries to fuck you in the ass when you are sober does not love you."

Ah, Washingtonienne. I don't believe a word she says. But what a hoot!

Can you believe that, as a member of the East Coast media elite, Jessica is still the only reason I've ever visited Wonkette? I'm so poseur.

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The parallels are uncanny. A scruffy teacher with a love of music charms a room full of impressionable young minds looking to bust some societal barriers. Through a love of his craft and an intense desire to relate he connects with them in ways no other teacher has before. The parents find out and get him fired. But this shepherd of young minds and his dynamically creative flock keep their integrity!

School of Rock? Or something else?

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... inspired by a "calf fry".

a) Do not chuckle urbanely when directed to the "veranda" by the proud owner of even a heavily-modified double-wide.

b) "Junk-in-the-trunk", and considerable pride therein, is alive and well in the sticks.

c) Home-welded deep-frying vats, stacked atop antique gas-grills, set inside a less-than-spotlessly-cleaned horse trailer, makes for a surprisingly nice calf-fry kitchen. It probably also makes it easier to hide the evidence in the event of an accident.

d) If you choose to date a violent prison inmate, your children and grandchildren may not want to talk to you much anymore. FYI.

e) For the uninitiated, understanding farmers talk about farming is no easier than understanding biologist-knitters talk about plant dispersal, anemones or snail mucus. Helpful hint: nod now and Google later.

f) Calf-fries still taste like Chicken McNuggets. Sorry to ruin the mystery for y'all. Slow-smoked hog, on the other hand, tastes like nothing else this side of heaven.

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Each and every one of you probably missed this, but Married to the Kellys is dying an ignoble death. Thus far, the cast and fans are upset that this seems to have generated less interest among viewers than the termination of "Friends."

The Kelly girls seem to be taking it in stride. Maybe KU's kickass recruiting haul has provided some comfort.

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Who wouldn't want a smite button?

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This thing's so offensive, you know they're gonna figure out a way to make my tax dollars pay for it, just to add insult to the injury.

Let's be clear, folks: The proposed Jets stadium looks like an upside-down memory chip, as designed by an Apple Computer geek circa 2001.

What is it about the Olympics that makes cities stupid? I blame Atlanta: After those games, every city in the world believed the bar was just low enough.

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Bush refuses to halt shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. This makes no sense to me from an economic standpoint. Some oil market analysts currently believe that oil is over-priced from a supply-demand perspective and the price of oil will fall later in 2004.

Why not do what Kerry proposes: halt shipments to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? This would likely decrease the price of oil in the short term since the U.S. Government wouldn't be competing for the current oil supply and the U.S. could spend our taxdollars more responsibly by filling up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve when oil prices are lower. By buying oil in 2005 instead of in the current market, the U.S. could get 7 barrels for the price of 6 barrels today.

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This month's Harper's Magazine has a brief article about the influence of the anti-democratic philosopher Leo Strauss on the Bush administration and neoconservatives in general. Under Strauss's philosophy, it is the obligation of the elites to deceive the public in order to lead the country. Keep that in mind as you read this NY Times article.

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Since some anger here was directed at the reporter who told the Berg family that the video of their son's beheading was available on the Net, I thought y'all might be interested in the response from the reporter on Romenesko:

From JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press: Perhaps for cathartic reasons, I'm going to offer some thoughts on telling Nick Berg's family about the videotape. First, the context, which all of the posters here would have no way of knowing: I had spent about an hour with the father that morning before news of the web site, interviewing him about Nick's death, hearing a proud father offer stories of an ambitious son. That helped the situation immensely, developing that rapport. My editor called, told me the breaking news, and my response to him was that certainly there must be someone besides me whose job it was to tell the family. But that was the situation. The Boston Globe's Michael Saunders' post was so dead-on about what a reporter should do next, it was almost as if he were there. I put away my notebook. I told them the news as if I were telling my own family. I stood, watched, took mental notes. I did not ask any questions, but listened carefully to Michael's three sentence response. I was one part reporter and nine parts human.

The neighborhood was quiet, the street empty. There was no media horde, which made the telling (and the hearing, no doubt) easier than it otherwise might have been. And of course, although I did not know that they knew, the family already knew Nick had been decapitated, but the news of the web site was devastating.

I spoke with the family a handful of times last week in follow-up, and each time we spoke they thanked me for telling them. They never said why exactly, and I never asked. But for me this is the most important point -- what would the alternative have been for them? Walking by the TV and seeing the grainy video, or getting a cold call from someone (a reporter) they'd never seen or talked to before? Even though it was the most emotionally wrenching moment I've been a part of in many years, I'm glad I was there. If the goal is to minimize the harm, I believe that my telling the family did that.

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I love Newsday's Impulse party pics. Every Friday, Newsday does a profile of a bar on Long Island complete with photos and quotes from the club goers.

It's almost enough to make me want to go to clubs on Long Island in the hopes that I might be chosen by Newsday. I have my quote all ready:

"If you have to go to a club in a strip mall, it might as well be this one."

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Many Democrats and pundits felt that Kerry erred by waiting to respond to Bush's $60 million ad campaign against him. Kerry's actions, or lack thereof, would make more sense if his campaign had caught wind of the fact that the Abu Ghraib story was going to break. By holding off on his major campaign media buy until the prisoner abuse scandal broke, the ads extolling his lifetime of service would contrast nicely with the shitstorm that is starting to envelope the Bush administration.

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Bush complaining about activist judges and celebrating the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education is funny/sad on so many different levels.

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So, we went to the Kerry rally. There was some complicated ticket scheme and a really long line, plus blocked off streets, so we didn't actually make it into the square. Instead we hovered just halfway out of earshot, in front of the pro-bush hecklers (best sign: "I was going to vote FOR Kerry, and then decided to vote AGAINST him!"). Since we could only hear about every 3rd word, we were in the group that was basically running interference on the haters (best, although probably least helpful, retort: goosestepping in front of the Bush crowd and giving them each a Nazi stiff arm salute). When the hecklers started chanting "4 more years" they were heckled back with "6 more months".

The ubiquitous Art Alexakis sang. Howard Dean was introduced by some people that didn't talk loud enough to be understood. Earl Blumenauer, my U.S. Representative, was there and must have talked, but he's not big on vocal dynamics either. Dean said something about "people knowing the difference between right and wrong" and then Kerry was up.

Gave the standard stump. I decided two things: first, protectionism politics is a deal with the devil for democrats. It'll probably help get him elected, but it's ugly. Second, Kerry really isn't much of a speaker. I know, that's conventional wisdom on him, and has been for months. But people waited two hours in a drizzle to see him and he couldn't really hold their attention for half an hour. His idea of emphasizing a point seems to be to drone more loudly.

That said, I believe it's an overblown story. Here's why: I think the press corps is far more attuned to this they anyone else because not only do they hear all his speech, but they hear it several times a day most days of the week and are far more sophisticated about dissecting political skills than most people anyway. On top of that, the vast majority of people in the U.S., I would wager, are not likely to ever hear him give a 45-minute stump speech. It just doesn't matter.

He did stick around to shake hands with just about everyone (that was inside the security zone). Kerry gets the armor-plated SUV. Dean got put in the back of a Chevy Malibu. And Portland avoided living up to its nickname of "Little Beirut" given it by Bush 41. So much for fear and loathing on the campaign trail.

Actually, not. A little more loathing: I don't know exactly what they do, but these mid-twenties age dudes in suits, ties, and backwards baseball caps were wandering around the security area directing people around looking like vice presidents of Sigma Chi or something. Turns out, well connected frat dudes really do run the world. Well, I always suspected the "nerds will someday rule the world" mantra was a little too good to be true.

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Maybe instead of seeing Kerry and Dean tonight, I'll go to "Random Acts of Dennis"

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Today is the Syttende Mai, the 190th anniversary of Norway's independence.

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Slate talks to Joel Moore. The article explains why he's appeared in so many commercials in this way:

"With rangy limbs, outsized features, and a goofy voice, he's a distinctive package" with "a certain 'geeky Gen-X thing'."

Maybe I like him because that's how I'd like to be described.

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The Washington Post had a depressing story in its Style section today about how people in Joseph Darby's hometown feel about him blowing the whistle on the practices at Abu Ghraib. Not even Nellie McKay's Get Away From Me can help this bitter little pill go down.

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I'm iffy enough on John Kerry as it is. If Gephardt were to be added to the ticket, I might just stay home in November.

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Alexandra Kerry wears a see-through dress at Cannes and The Sun is there. All I can say is "wow." Also, Mickey Kaus sucks for not warning his readers that the pic is NSFW.

Ogged at Unfogged points out, however, that the dress probably wasn't actually see-through, it's just the photographers' flashbulbs that made it appear that way.

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I've been agonizing over this a lot lately. I'm planning a move next year and, on the one hand, it seems silly not to stick it out when the pay's decent, the benefits are great and the folks are easygoing. On the other hand, I'm burned out beyond belief and yearning for a change of pace.

In light of the shitty economy and relatively secure work environment I enjoy, is the still a good argument to be made for moving on now?

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I just want folks on norlos to know that the blog's voice of conservative politics, max fortitude, is now officially gone for a 2 year stint of active duty. he is headed to texas for three months of training, and then off to northern iraq. Hopefully he will have some sort of access to the blog to keep us updated on his status, but more importantly, we hope that he returns safely after completing his service.
Please keep him in mind, with everything else he has to deal with there, i just heard of camel spiders.

http://www.ulrp2.com/photos/images/camelspider.jpg

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As I mentioned yesterday, Movable Type (the software that powers Norlos.com) has a new version out that could eliminate comment spam. It's also for-pay now, and at pretty steep prices for users like me, even though we're using the software non-commercially. For those interested in following the MT reaction blow-by-blow, check out the words of blog gurus Brad Choate, Mark Pilgrim, Jay Allen, Scriptygoddess, Slashdot and Dave Winer. For those who don't care what's under the hood, go turn on a rerun of Coach. That Jerry Van Dyke -- what a freakin' hoot!

I've decided to wait and see what happens to Movable Type and to other potential blog software packages, including something called WordPress. But I've decided that 1) I don't mind paying for a good blogging tool, 2) I'm gonna go with the cheapest and best package, and 3) It's all gonna be invisible to you folks.

But in thinking about the options, I asked myself whether we really want to limit the ability of others to leave comments on the blog. I'm not happy about spam. Spam makes sites that sell Viagra and subprime mortgages popular in the eyes of Google through a degradation of the credibility of our own dear site. I spend a few minutes each week removing spam from the blog. Not a huge commitment, but I could use those minutes for dancing joyously to My Baby instead.

One solution is making those who leave comments register with us first. That would kill spam right away. But I now wonder whether it would kill the rather fun commentary posted by those outside our little simulation of the Stephenson Hall living room. Yes, lots of the outside comments are ignorant, when they're not just plain spiteful. And a few are, clinically speaking, utterly freakin' nuts (check out the Charles Wilson quote, and tell me what the heck he's talking about).

But lots of them have been fun, like the time the grandfather of the little girl in the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players spoke up in defense of his family, or when Joe Paulino Googled himself and ended up here. Then there's the Trogdor fans, who were probably as puzzled to wind up here as we were to see them arrive. People like to come and leave comments, adding to the back and forth.

This gets me wondering. If we register outsiders before they comment, will they decline to post at all? A registration system separates humans from robots, ensuring that the person leaving a comment is an actual person and not a clever bit of spam-spreading software. But it also might scare off those who don't want to give any personal information to a total stranger.

So what think you, folks? Do we want to restrict access, killing spam and its implied endorsement by Norlos of the world's herbal cures for left-leaning erections, while still allowing folks on the up-and-up to ultimately leave their comments? Or do we continue with an unrestricted free-for-all, in which any person can say anything about your post, and any robot can make it into an add for breast-enlargement lotion, even if we eventually root out the offensive HTML and delete it? Your thoughts welcome here at the end of the bar...

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That massive wail you heard this morning came from Blogger Nation, after checking the web site for Movable Type. This particular piece of software comes from Six Apart, the company founded by Ben & Mena Trott, and powers this, your favorite blog. While in recent months they've branched out to the for-pay TypePad service (which is pretty cool if you find Norlos too constricting and decide to form your own pre-state frontier territory within B-Nation), Movable Type has been free for many years. Fans have contributed, and I've put in a donation on behalf of all of us, but Six Apart has functioned for the most part without a mandatory charge to its customers.

Until today. That's when they launched Movable Type 3.0. I've been waiting for this for a year (Norlos runs 2.6). Among other things, MT 3.0 requires registering before one can leave comments. Oh blessed be the Deity! Registering is quick, painless, and could potentially eliminate the scourge that is comment spam. So I was eager to see what they had.

And for Norlos, it's no improvement. Sure, they have a product that would fit us. It just costs three digits. The problem: Too many members. If I must, I'd kick off Jebus. But since I've borrowed his Fender Mustang, I have to be nice to him.

Am I cheap? Yep. There's a line in a Replacements song about being "sick of all the things my money can buy." Well, that's why I gravitate to free!

It's unclear to me whether what Ben & Mena are up to is smooth business or not. Perhaps the non-developer version will suffice. In the meantime, you know what to you if you receive comment spam. I love kicking spammer ass...

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from the salt lake news:

Catholics who vote for politicians who support abortion rights or gay marriage will be banned from Communion until they have "recanted their positions" and confessed their sin, a Colorado bishop warned.
ÝÝÝ Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs said any Catholic who does not reflect church teaching in the voting booth "makes a mockery of that faith and belies his identity as a Catholic."

in my mind, if this is practice is accepted, the the catholic chruch should lose their tax exempt status. if this is not political commentary and influence, i dont know what is.

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BBC News is reporting that U.S. tanks and troops moved into a cemetery near a holy shrine in Najaf and traded fire with Shia fighters sheltering among the tombs. The cemetery's name is Wadi us-Salaam and it is the second largest cemetery in the world after the Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg. Wadi-us-Salaam means "Valley of Peace" and tradition holds that the tombs of Abraham and Isaac are located there. Some believe that Wadi-us-Salaam is actually part of heaven located on earth.

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Last week, Jonah Goldberg said in the interest of protecting U.S. interests in Iraq and elsewhere, CBS should have voluntarilyt declined to broadcast the Abu Ghraib photos. Today, MeFi points to an interesting spiked article that says for months the American media did decline to investigate the story.

Ivan Frederick, one of the accused, tried to draw the media's attention to the Abu Ghraib since he felt that without public inquiry the lowest ranking soldiers would become the fall guys (and gals) for the abuses in Abu Ghraib. After media people like Bill O'Reilly and FoxNews refused to investigate Frederick's claims, Frederick finally got in contact with David Hackworth*. Hackworth, the self-stylized most decorated soldier in U.S. history, helped put Frederick in contact with CBS and the rest is history.

*Full disclosure: I dislike Bill O'Reilly, but I've like Hackworth's columns since he wrote for Newsweek during Desert Storm.

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The NY Post has an article today called "Leash Gal's Sex Pix" about alleged photographs of Lynndie England having sex with multiple partners at Abu Ghraib prison. The Post article almost makes it sound like England was the only person having sex in Abu Ghraib even though logic dictates that to have heterosexual sex one must have a male partner.

Why didn't the Post identify any of the male partners? The only conclusion I can draw from the article is that women don't belong in the military because they're sluts who distract male soldiers from their pursuit of moral excellence.

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People often cite the negative consequences of invasive species but rarely mention the benefits like exciting alligator-python battles in our national parks.

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The NY Times has an article today about the harsh methods employed by the CIA during interrogations of Al Qaeda detainees. As today's papers points out in Slate, little in the article is substantively different from articles that appeared in the NY Times a year ago or in the Washington Post two years ago. The difference now is that we have graphic evidence of what these methods can look like.

For a broad look at the issue of interrogation and torture, turn to the Atlantic Monthly. While I was waiting for you all to show up at my birthday party last October, I read this article on "The Dark Art of Interrogation". It provides a nice overview on the issue of interrogation and looks at the issue of when intensive itnerrogation becomes torture. In 2002, the Atlantic looked at the lessons that can be drawn from the use of torture during the Battle of Algiers and the Sri Lankan war against the Tamil Tigers. Finally, in 1986, a couple of years before I started reading the Atlantic regularly, there was this essay on torture.

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You gotta be sure they're real. This makes me extremely happy.

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Usually when I get to work the first thing I do is make a quick perusal of internet news sites. This morning I was surprised to discover that Salon had a link to the entire videotape of Nick Berg's beheading.

While I understand (and agree with ) the media's arguments for publishing some of the Abu Ghraib photos, Salon's gesture strikes me as creepy, gratiutous and grossly insensitive to Berg's family. Frankly, I can see no reason why a relatively mainstream news organization needs to make the entire videotape available to the general public when the tape's contents were already detailed in print.

I assune Salon's rationale in doing this is to demonstrate how "gruesome digital images are forcing us, and forcing the government, to confront the awful reality of war", but I still think they stepped over the line in this case. The tape, presumably, is out there in cyberspace, available for anyone diligent and determined enough to find it. But I don't think reputable news organizations should be posting links to snuff films on their websites, and I don't think the American public needs to see murder footage to 'grasp the realities of this war'.

Thoughts?

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I missed this yesterday, but Quin has problems. Whose name do you suppose was blacked out?

In other basketball news, Danny Manning uses canned beans. And check out the grilled-cheese sandwich recipe.

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This has made me laugh harder than anything in a long time. Thanks, local newsguys!

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Russ Kick from The Memory Hole is doing the Guest Bar over at Boing Boing.

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While I'd still like to see electronic voting machines be constructed and designed by an independent not-for-profit public entity, this Washington Times editorial defending electronic voting appears reasonable to me. Are there any technical holes in his argument?

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As has been mentioned in many articles, the Red Cross was the first entity outside the U.S. military to learn about the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Until this AP article, however, no media source had adequately answered this question for me: if the Red Cross knew about all this shit, why the fuck didn't they make a fuss?

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Pass auf, Klaus!

via MeFi

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