:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 9.28.2005 ::

:: "Witness Says Pa. Board Was Anti-Evolution" ::

Witness in 'Intelligent Design' Trial in Pa. Said School Board Showed Clear Anti-Evolution Bias
From ABC News
By MARTHA RAFFAELE

HARRISBURG, Pa. Sep 27, 2005 — A rural school board showed a clear bias against teaching evolution before it pushed through a plan to introduce "intelligent design" to students, a former board member testified Tuesday in a trial over whether the concept has a place in public schools.

Aralene "Barrie" Callahan, who was once on the Dover school board and is now among the challengers, said she believed the policy to teach intelligent design was religion-based.

Eight families are trying to remove the theory from the Dover Area School District curriculum, arguing that it violates the constitutional separation of church and state. They say "intelligent design" effectively promotes the Bible's view of creation.

Read more here.

ALSO

Darwin vs God case opens in US
Australian, Australia

Darwin v. intelligent design
Globe and Mail, Canada

posted by me

:: 11:53:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Sheehan Arrested During Antiwar Protest" ::

From The Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON -- Cindy Sheehan, whose protest camp outside President Bush's vacation home in Texas became a focal point of the antiwar movement this summer, was arrested today outside the White House at the head of a civil disobedience campaign intended to dramatize the opposition to the war in Iraq.

On the third day of demonstrations that brought tens of thousands of opponents to the war to Washington on Saturday, a much smaller group sat down in front of the executive mansion, after being refused an opportunity to meet with a White House staff member.

They sought to present a petition calling for the withdrawal of the U.S. troops in Iraq.

At least a dozen were arrested.

posted by me

:: 2:54:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Goof Lets Times' Content Go Free" ::

From Wired News
By Cyrus Farivar

On Monday, The New York Times introduced the first paid section of its online version. In less than 24 hours, someone found a way around the TimesSelect paid subscription service.

Never Pay Retail was created on the same day that TimesSelect began. The blog links to other newspapers that syndicate the Times' Op-Ed content and are putting it online for free. To access the Op-Ed content and archives on the Times' site, readers have to pay $50 a year.

"If The New York Times doesn't want the eyeballs for their advertisers then their syndicates deserve them, so why not make it easier to find (the articles)?" said John Tabin, the creator of Never Pay Retail.

Never Pay Retail began to circulate around the blogosphere and was linked on one popular blog, Instapundit.com, Tuesday evening.

Tabin, an online columnist for The American Spectator, says that it takes him just a couple of minutes each day to scour Google News and find the newspapers that are reprinting the columns.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 12:01:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Link Monkeys Like Money" ::

Can Bloggers Strike It Rich?
From Wired News
Media Hack » Blog network pioneers keep their finances close to the chest, but salary information for scribes behind hit sites like Gizmodo, Fleshbot and Gawker is starting to trickle out. Time to quit your day job and blog for a living? Commentary by Adam Penenberg

posted by me

:: 10:21:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "W's Pee-Break Pic, Deconstructed" ::

From Wired News
By Momus

Last week the Reuters agency published a rather unusual photo as part of its coverage of the U.N. Security Council meeting. The picture showed a man's hand holding a pencil, writing on a small piece of paper. The visible parts of the note, which mixed capital and lower-case lettering apparently indiscriminately, read: "I THINK I MAY NEED A BATHroom break? Is this possib W."

"U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York Sept. 14, 2005," explained the Reuters caption, attributing the picture to freelance photojournalist Rick Wilking. Whether the president was requesting the secretary of state's permission to visit the bathroom himself, or whether it was Rice who was running the concept of a ladies-room visit past the president (making the W not a signature but the first letter of the appended reply "wait," perhaps) remains unclear.

iMomusBlogs and bulletin boards were immediately abuzz, with toilet humorists scenting a real-life rerun of the faked Bush TV debate notes on humor site That's Uncalled For, in which Bush was "revealed" to have been scribbling "Do not pick nose!" "Kairy is a poop" and "Call Diebold tomorrow!"

The first reaction was disbelief. Could this be real? If so, why did the index finger of the writing hand seem to cast a thin halo of ghostly mist onto the printed document behind it, whiting out the letters? Someone had clearly manipulated the image digitally, in Photoshop or some other program. It must be fake.

One contributor to bulletin board I Love Everything had an explanation: "Somebody tweaked the levels on the paper to bring out the text, but they left his hand as is," explained a certain "Walter Kranz" (the name turned out to be an avatar). "It looks like they made a really rough selection around his hand, though, so it left a little halo where you can see what the original contrast on the text was."

But this didn't make the image fake: "Why would there be a fake image distributed by Reuters?" Kranz asked. "If it were a fake, why would any Photoshopping even be necessary? It's not like we can even tell that it's Bush without being told so by a reporter."

I like this way of thinking. Not only because Kranz is right -- Reuters picture editor Gary Hershorn later confirmed that Reuters did Photoshop the image, but just to enhance the contrast, and that this is "a standard practice for news photos" -- but because it's somewhat counter-intuitive (and, no doubt, because I'm somewhat perverse and love paradoxes). Common sense would seem to dictate that an image is "true" if unmanipulated and "fake" if manipulated. A simplistic (not to say moralistic) view would be that editorial intervention could only make the raw, unmediated truth of the image less true.

But if Kranz is right, the thing that establishes the veracity of an image is not the image itself, or even the words that put it in context, but our relationship of trust with the person speaking those words. The fact that an image has been Photoshopped might even, in some circumstances, be a sign of its trustworthiness rather than the reverse. Photoshop can clarify as well as falsify, but if you're really intent on falsifying, the last thing you'd do is leave evidence of your alterations.

The more I think about my own photography habits, the more I'm convinced that the idea of an "unmanipulated" or "unedited" photo is an absurdity. I'm manipulating and editing the whole time! I see the picture in my head, choose the focal length of the lens, zoom, frame the composition in my camera viewfinder, sense a "decisive moment," press the shutter, then later open the downloaded images in Photoshop, select the best ones, rotate them, change the cropping, bring up the contrast, make the colors look more natural, clean them up. If I'm a professional photographer like Wilking, I'll then send my selection of edited pictures to my editor, who'll "manipulate" them more, making his selections from within my selections, his crops and contrast adjustments, then fit the images into a wider narrative in which they're "true" in quite a different way.

At issue here is not pixels but context; it's not the manipulation of the image that makes it true or false, but whether we buy the narrative being created by the person selecting the picture for our attention. The bathroom-break note is newsworthy not because it's terribly interesting that presidents and secretaries of state must use the washroom like everybody else, or that a photographer caught them passing trivial notes back and forth at the United Nations. It's newsworthy because of the wider context: plummeting popularity ratings for Bush in the aftermath of his poor response to the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina.

"The question is this," comments Tim Grieve in Salon's War Room section: "Would a major news agency -- in this case, Reuters -- have moved such a photo if the president weren't already so diminished?"

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our pixels, but in ourselves," as Shakespeare didn't quite have Julius Caesar say. Et tu, Reuters?

© Copyright 2005, Lycos

posted by me

:: 10:51:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "NY police cut short speech by Sheehan" ::

From Independent Online

New York - Police cut short a speech by anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, arresting a rally organiser accused of failing to obtain audio permits for the event, according to published reports.

Sheehan, the grieving mother whose 26-day vigil near President George Bush's Texas ranch sparked anti-war protests around the country, had nearly finished her speech on Monday when police intervened, The New York Times reported.

She was ushered away from the Union Square rally by supporters as onlookers yelled at police and chanted "let her speak".

The organiser, Paul Zulkowitz, was released after being given a court summons for charges of unauthorised use of a sound device and disorderly conduct, Detective Kevin Czartoryski told the Times, calling the arrest an "appropriate action".

But many onlookers were upset, with some saying the incident recalled the arrests of more than 1 800 protesters last year during the Republican National Convention.

"This is what's been happening for the last couple of years," said the co-chairperson of the Green Party's Manhattan chapter, Daniel Starling, who attended the rally.

"Every time we try to hold a demonstration, they arrest us."

Sheehan, whose son died in the Iraq war, is calling for the immediate return of troops from the region in a 25-state tour that is to culminate in an anti-war march in Washington on September 24. -Sapa-AP

posted by me

:: 11:03:00 AM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird (.919)

LEAD STORY
Another Underreported Success Story in the Rebuilding of Iraq: "Abu Mustafa" (a nickname) is part of a small market of vendors of pornographic videos operating in Baghdad, according to an August Reuters dispatch, and sells about 50 DVDs a day, with movies from Lebanon and other Arab countries the most popular. "I tried lots of other jobs," he said, but this was his most promising opportunity (although he said the righteous Shi'ite Badr Brigades have threatened to kill him and his approximately 30 competitors in the Bab al-Sharjee neighborhood). [Reuters, 8-10-05]

Recurring Themes
Among the stories fabricated by the former New Republic writer Stephen Glass was a March 1998 description (picked up, unfortunately, by News of the Weird) of two Wall Street companies' ritual worship of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. (One supposedly held a cake party and songfest on Greenspan's birthday; the other supposedly had a special office with Greenspan memorabilia to help bond traders meditate. Two months later, the magazine fired Glass and apologized for the fictions.) In August 2005, Erin Crowe, a recent art graduate of the University of Virginia, quietly placed in a New York gallery 18 paintings and sketches she had made over the years of Greenspan, a subject she chose "because his face is so interesting, his lips, his ears" and "his forehead, his comb over." As news circulated about their existence, money managers from around the country quickly bought all 18 pieces at prices up to $4,000 each. [Washington Post, 8-11-05; St. Petersburg Times-AP, 8-16-05]

Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com

posted by me

:: 10:23:00 PM [+] ::
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:: RE Bloogle ::

Google launches blog search
From PC Pro, UK

Google has released a beta version of its long-awaited and much anticipated blog search, two years after it acquired the popular Blogger technology and blog service.
However, it appears that the new service is over-zealous in its search for content, and is indexing some blogs, even if the blog instructs it to ignore with meta tags in a file called robots.txt.

For example, searching Google's blog search for notbbc lists 52 results, despite the presence in the blog of a robots.txt file telling the search bots to ignore all content.

Google's BloggerBuzz explains: 'Blog Search was designed to respect robots.txt and NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW meta tags. Unfortunately, we discovered a bug which caused some of these blogs to be indexed despite the presence of the meta tags.

'We are already in progress on removing from the index those blogs that were affected and apologize for the unintended exposure.'

This is the first Google search to specifically target blogs - which it defines as sites that use RSS or Atom feeds and update content on a regular basis - although its standard Web search and its news service both include blogs to varying degrees. It scans both blog content and feeds, virtually in real time according to Jason Goldman, Google product manager for blog search.

'We look for sites that update pinging services, and then we crawl in real-time so that we can serve up search results that are as fresh as we can,' he explained to SearchEngineWatch.

Google says that as a result the blog search will update with new content much faster than standard Web searches and because of the structured data within site feeds, it will be possible to find precise posts and date ranges with much greater accuracy.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:15:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Arianna Learns to Love the Blog" ::

From Wired News
Media Hack » The controversial pundit behind The Huffington Post explains why the mainstream media is failing, and serves up some zingers for Bush apologists posing as journalists. A Wired News Q&A with Adam Penenberg.

EXCERPT

Wired News: Do you think the press has given President Bush a free ride?

Arianna Huffington: The unquestioning regurgitation of administration spin through the use of anonymous sources is the fault line of modern American journalism. You'd think that after all we've seen -- from the horrific reporting on WMD to Judy Miller and Plamegate (to say nothing of all the endless navel-gazing media panel discussions analyzing the issue) -- these guys would finally get a clue and stop making the Journalism 101 mistake of granting anonymity to administration sources using them to smear their opponents.

The Washington Post, for example, citing an anonymous "senior Bush official," reported on Sept. 4 that, as of Saturday, Sept. 3, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco "still had not declared a state of emergency" ... when, in fact, the declaration had been made on Friday, Aug. 26 -- more than two days before Katrina hit Louisiana. This claim was so demonstrably false that the paper was forced to issue a correction just hours after the original story appeared. It's time for the media to get back to doing their job and stop being a principal weapon in Team Bush's damage-control arsenal.

WN: Do news organizations do anything right?

Huffington: Sure. Mainstream sports coverage is excellent!

[LOL=]
posted by me

:: 10:11:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Siblings Mark Anniversary of 9/11 Attacks" ::

From The Guardian Unlimited, UK

NEW YORK (AP) - Grieving siblings of those who died at the World Trade Center returned to the site on the fourth anniversary of the nation's worst terrorist attack, promising their dead brothers and sisters they would never be forgotten.

``My big sister, my better half, life will never be the same without you,'' Rolando Moreno said to Yvette Moreno, who died in Sept. 11 attacks.

More than 600 siblings on Sunday read aloud the names of the 2,749 victims who died at the complex four years ago. Thousands of relatives held pictures of their loved ones aloft, while others carried flowers. Some sobbed during the four-hour ceremony.

The mourners paused for moments of silence at 8:46 a.m., the time when the first hijacked jetliner crashed into the north tower; at 9:03 a.m., when the second plane struck the south tower; at 9:59 a.m., when the south tower fell; and at 10:29 a.m., when the second tower collapsed.

``You were my baby brother, I took care of you,'' Iliana Flores told her paramedic brother, Carlos Lillo, as she choked up and raised her face to the sky. ``I still miss you a lot. You're taking care of us from heaven but someday we'll be together.''

Tears sometimes swallowed their words as they read the names, and relatives in the crowd bowed their heads and cried as the siblings spoke. Several times, the brothers and sisters came in groups - sometimes six or seven large - to honor their loved one, all huddling together to say the name. Some blew kisses to the sunny, pale-blue sky, while others said over and over, ``We love you. We miss you.''

``We know you're keeping everyone laughing up in heaven,'' said Kathleen Pslrogianes to her brother, Thomas Cahill, a Cantor Fitzgerald trader who was 36 when he died.

As the names of the dead were read, weeping mourners filed down a ramp to a reflecting memorial pool at the floor of the site, which remains virtually empty four years after the attack tore a hole in the New York skyline. Families filled the water with red, orange and yellow roses, some shaking as they inscribed dedications on the wooden edge of the pool.

posted by me

:: 10:20:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "TERROR IN TINY TOWN" ::

From an e-newsletter
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Greg Palast reporting from Southold, New York

In the War on Terror, we are all on the front lines. Now Southold has apparently
been targeted by Al Qaeda. I'm not surprised.

Southold, if you look at a map, is situated at the ass end of nowhere. We are known
for our Strawberry Festival and fire truck parade. According to the Census, this
tiny place is made up almost entirely of inbred farmers, real estate speculators
and volunteer firemen.

At one end of town is the "Brand Names Outlet Mall" and the water-slide
park. At the other end, there's a ferry boat that takes those who feel lucky to
the Indian casino in Connecticut. And in between, there's Main Street where we hold
the Strawberry Festival. (The festival is a quaint and annoying white-folks' ritual,
an opportunity for backstabbing, petty infighting and all-American small-mindedness.
But that's another story altogether.)

Last month, Town Supervisor Josh, with powers granted him by the Department of Homeland
Security, declared a "national security emergency." (Supervisor Josh Horton
is called by his first name because he was elected at the precocious age of 26 --
based, it seems, on his stellar qualifications: he wears shoes.) In light of the
clear and present threat of attack, Supervisor Josh ordered every one taking the
ferry boat to the Indian casino to park in the dirt lot across from the Country
Store and not along Route 25.

It was just after the London bombings and Supervisor Josh insisted this was truly
a matter of preparing for terrorist attack, though some locals suspected it was
less about Al Qaeda and more about zoning. Supervisor Josh had been trying all year,
unsuccessfully, to change the zoning on the dirt lot next to the ferryboat launch
from "farming" to "parking" to boost the town's take from the
inebriated gambling tourists. To scare off both Al Qaeda and parking violators,
Josh has posted, care of the federal treasury, an SUV at the ferry dock armed with
two .50-caliber machine guns. I kid you not.

The ferry to the Indian casino is our officially designated town "terrorism
vulnerability point" (TVP). If you don't pick a "terrorism vulnerability
point," the town can't get its slice of Homeland Security loot from the federal
government.

All ferry passengers are now asked for their home phone numbers, though if they
are suicide bombers, they will not, after they strike, be able to answer the phone.
No matter.

Homeland Security assigned three guardsmen, armed and armored, to the Vulnerability
Point because the town police are a little shorthanded since the crime wave in the
hamlet of Greenport a couple years back. It involved some petty theft, racial slur
complaints and baggies of pot sold. The crime wave ended when the village disbanded
its minuscule police force -- which had committed all the crimes.

Locals are taking the heightened security at the ferry with patriotic stoicism.
Our local pennysaver printed a letter from John Wronowski saying, "National
security and safety [must be] at the forefront of our efforts ?since September 11,
2001."

Mr. Wronowski owns the ferry boat and parking lot.

The paper, The Suffolk Times, interviewed a passenger who bravely travels to visit
his inlaws twice a week. He said, with true grit, "I am not afraid."

But I am. What if there's a sleeper cell in Southold? All they have to do is review
the Homeland Security website for the town's Vulnerability Point and they'll know,
"Hit the water slide, Ahmad! The casino ferry's being watched!"

And there's more here that scares me. There's a jug out at the Lickety Splitz Ice
Cream Parlor on Route 25 for the Cennar Family. It seems that one of the Cennar
kids has been diagnosed with some terrible disease. Undoubtedly, the doctor bills
are killing the family, could bankrupt them -- and the community jug is out. There's
always a jug out for someone who's ill or got crippled and whose bank account has
been wiped away.

And I thought: this is a national security threat. With the lumber yard shut and
the plastics plants gone to China, Al Qaeda could quite easily gain a couple of
recruits in our town: all Bin Laden has to do is offer health insurance.

**********

posted by me

:: 10:10:00 AM [+] ::
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:: P2P update from down under ::

Kazaa appeal likely in 2006
By Iain Ferguson, ZDNet Australia

Any appeal by key players associated with the Kazaa file-sharing software will only be heard in February or March next year.
In a landmark anti-piracy judgement, the Federal Court found Sharman Networks, and associated individuals and companies had facilitated users' copyright infringement via Kazaa. The court required the Sharman parties to install filters on the software to protect copyright works from unauthorised trading and indicated the parties faced substantial damages.

The parties have two months to comply with the filtering ruling in the case, which was brought when major record labels, including Sony BMG, EMI, Universal and Festival Mushroom, claimed Kazaa was facilitating massive copyright infringement associated with their artists.

In his judgement, Federal Court Justice Murray Wilcox set two conditions on the appeal process. Firstly, the party appealing must aim to be heard in the February 2006 Full Court sittings.

The Full Court -- which hears appeals from decisions of a single judge of the Federal Court -- is scheduled to sit from 13 February to 10 March 2006.

Secondly, any appeal application would depend on whether modifications to Kazaa were approved by the court or agreed by the music labels.

Sharman Networks is expected to lodge its request for leave to appeal before the deadline of three weeks from yesterday's decision expires.

Sharman's lawyer, Mary Still, reiterated through a spokesperson today the company's position last night that it would "appeal those parts of the decision where we were not successful" remained unchanged.

ALSO
Court orders copyright filter on Kazaa
Guardian Unlimited, UK

Australian court rules against Kazaa
CNET News.com

posted by me

:: 7:51:00 AM [+] ::
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:: So Weird ::

From Chuck Shepherd's News of the Weird

Leading Economic Indicators

A 1958 Pablo Picasso original, "Atelier de Cannes," was placed on sale recently by the discount chain Costco (at its Web site Costco.com), priced to move at the retail-type listing of $129,999.99. Costco began offering art on consignment from dealers last year, but "Atelier" (a crayon drawing authenticated by daughter Maya Picasso) is by far its most expensive piece. According to an August report in the New York Post, the company extends its regular guarantee of full refund if dissatisfied. [New York Post, 8-12-05]

A Pakistani company, The Resource Group, seeking more call-center work from U.S. firms, set up an office this year in Washington, D.C., a block from the White House, and installed a receptionist, live from Karachi, via a flat-screen TV on the office wall. According to a May Washington Post report, Ms. Saadia Musa cheerily greets visitors, answers and routes phone calls to the Washington office, lets in deliverymen, and orders sandwiches from down the street. [Washington Post, 5-10-05]

In July, Uttar Pradesh Eunuchs Association, in Lucknow, India, demanded that the district magistrate and the senior superintendent of police order cops to begin exposing fake eunuchs by lifting their skirts to verify their status. Charlatans, according to the group, deprive real eunuchs of "legitimate" income (a large part of which derives from eunuchs' entering places of business and private parties, exposing themselves and otherwise being obnoxious, and demanding a fee to leave). [Hindustan Times, 7-19-05]

Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNewsTips@yahoo.com

posted by me

:: 10:11:00 PM [+] ::
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:: Katrina: A view from abroad ::

Focus: City of the damned
From The Sunday Times, UK
New Orleans destroyed — yet the world’s superpower reacted as if asleep. Tony Allen-Mills reports from the stricken city on a natural disaster that became a national fiasco

The police cars shot down Royal Street, sirens howling, and drew up at a hotel in the heart of the French Quarter, the fabled New Orleans home of jazz, voodoo and vice.

“Shots fired,” yelled an officer sheltering by a shabby Creole townhouse. Officers sprinted for cover, pistols and shotguns in hand. The citizens of a great American city, devastated by hurricane and flood, were in dire need of rescue; yet armed men were roaming the streets, taking pot shots at emergency workers and helicopters.

“Is it safe here?” asked a startled antiques dealer, hovering by his shuttered shop.

“It ain’t safe anywhere, bud,” an officer snapped. “You should get out of town.”

But like thousands of others still trapped in the city on Friday, the antiques dealer had no obvious way out.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:59:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Bashing the Bush Bashers ::

NBC Deletes Rap Star's Remarks on Telethon
From The LA Times
By Matea Gold and Scott Collins, Times Staff Writers

Kanye West's impromptu attack on President Bush during a live telecast Friday prompted NBC to delete his remark in its West Coast broadcast of the benefit for hurricane victims.

"George Bush doesn't care about black people," West said.

The rap star also criticized coverage of the catastrophe. "I hate the way they portray us in the media," West said. "If you see a black family, it says they're looting. See a white family, it says they're looking for food."

West's remarks aired unedited in NBC's East Coast and Midwestern markets, and also on the simulcast versions for MSNBC, CNBC and Pax. However, the network turned off his microphone and switched to another performer shortly after he mentioned Bush.

Although the event was aired with a brief time delay so technicians could edit out profanity, it took a few minutes for producers to realize that West had strayed from the script.

posted by me

:: 10:11:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Beyond Superdome" ::

Flood Waters Can't Sink Net Link
From Wired News » New Orleans may be underwater, but one internet company in a downtown high-rise has been able to keep the lights on. It's even publishing live, on-the-street reports. By Joel Johnson.

Plus:
Resource: Katrina-Related Links

AND:
Craigslist Versus Katrina
Special Report » In hurricane-relief efforts, the net is proving to be much more than a communications network. By Keith Axline.

posted by me

:: 4:59:00 PM [+] ::
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